PREVIEW: SHORT CUTS 3

0 Comments POSTED: August 24, 2007 21:35 | By: Jay Dart

SHORT CUTS 3:
Innovative animations, dark dramas,
docs & mocs

BLOOD WILL TELL
Andrew McPhillips | English | 6 mins.
Mosquitoes suck the blood of a mysterious beast inside the dark depths of a windmill before turning their sights on a group of children playing outside in an idyllic landscape. This haunting 3-D animated film uses a new technique ? based upon a Victorian-era tin-type photographic process ? to allude to a world menaced by disease.

FARMER'S REQUIEM
Dir. Ramses Madian | English | 9 mins.
As an elderly farmer recounts his experiences and offers observations about the changing times, time-lapse images of decaying farms and barren fields illustrate the loss of tradition and livelihood. This is an exquisite elegy to a vanishing generation.

HASTING'S STREET
Dir. Larry Kent | English | 20 mins.
Larry Kent returns to his creative origins with the completion of Hastings Street, a dramatic portrait of a vulnerable young man set in downtown Vancouver. Filmed in 1963, prior to his first feature, The Bitter Ash, this monochromatic film is a flashback to another era of Canadian cinema and to a notorious street.

HIRSUTE
Dir. A.J. Bond | English | 14 mins
An experiment in time travel turns into a narcissistic nightmare when a scientist returns to the past and discovers that his former self deplores what he later became. A.J. Bond?s directing debut explores the ultimate fate of our self-seeking nature.

KNIGHTS OF ATOMIKARON
Dir. Adam Brodie, Dave Derewlany | English | 6 mins.
Knights of Atomikaron introduces us to Sir OMG and F12 of Gigamore, two oddball charac-ters in an elaborate role-playing game carried out by a close-knit group of men. Riffing on a number of contemporary documentaries, this mockumentary ventures into the men?s lives as they convey their private thoughts, hopes and greatest fears.

LATCHKEY'S LAMENT
Dir. Troy Nixey | English | 18 mins.
Elegant and dynamic computer-generated animation propels this live-action tale. In a monolithic factory, a heroic key battles the treacherous Keyfiend to avenge his lover?s demise.

TERMINUS
Dir. Trevor Cawood | English | 8 mins.
In Trevor Cawood?s compelling Terminus, a man manages to escape from the shadows of his towering worries, but does so at a gruesome cost. His private fears and anxieties manifest themselves as daunting figments of the imagination in this visually innovative, surrealist piece.

TERRY SOUTHERN'S PLUMS AND PRUNES
Dir. Dev Khana | English | 9 mins.
For his directorial debut, Dev Khanna has realized celebrated writer Terry Southern?s infamous screenplay ? which first appeared in Playboy magazine in 1967 ? about a father?s lust for his daughter. Terry Southern?s Plums and Prunes employs this taboo subject to criticize a traditional value system where people often preach one thing but think another.

Film briefs written by the Short Cuts Canada programming team: Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo, Alex Rogalski and Jay Dart.