See Manhattan Short Fest this week

Two kids and the Polish Chris Cooper in Echo.

This week, the Manhattan Short Film Festival is screening at venues all over the world.  If you have a chance to check it out, I would certainly recommend it.  The program includes ten shorts from ten different countries.  At the end of the two-hour program, attendees are given ballots to vote for their favorite.

The quality of the ten films is very high.  Nine are narrative, two animated (including the one non-narrative).  Most all fit into that classic short film structure: A character at a turning point moment.

The opening short, Watching, was very reminiscent of Chris Nolan's Following.  But it creates a taut little thriller with just a meeting of two characters in a diner.  It reminded me of the classic 3-2-1 assignment at Chapman film school - 3 pages, 2 characters, 1 location.  Beauty in economy.

I was transfixed by Helene Florent's A Little Inconvenience, about a man who wakes up to find himself floating off the ground.  Some I talked to at the screening were thrown by the ending, but I found something ethereal and beautiful in the images of the man gently floating off the ground.

Echo from Magnus Van Horn felt like a splice out of a feature, with a cunning detective slowly pulling the details of a horrible crime out of two teenage boys.  War, from Paolo Sassanelli, considers young boys playing war while their fathers still argue about the real thing in 1946 Italy.  The tone was balanced perfectly, never getting too cloying or too heavy-handed.

The acting and production values were professional quality across the board, with several of the films financed by government film boards.  At the same time, most came from a distinct enough voice to avoid that "auditioning for a feature" feel that can infect shorts.  And most revealed at least one endearing flaw - an actor who wasn't quite right, a location a little too "dressed."  There is still a handmade feel.

For those without access to a major film festival, traveling events like Manhattan Shorts and The Black Maria are a great opportunity to see a variety of burgeoning work from across the world.