This short, written and directed by Christine Parker (Channelling Baby) takes an allegorical look at the creative process. A writer has a korero with a trickster spirit guide Hinekaro (voiced by Rena Owen), and conjures worlds from the words she inks on a page. In her imaginative struggles she’s visited by a ruru owl and her younger self, and other creatures are brought strikingly to life via special effects (beetles from a book, an eel hiding in a toilet bowl). Hinekaro was adapted from a 1991 short story by Booker Prize-winner Keri Hulme.
Category: Short
The humour and irony-laden art criticism of György Kovásznai’s previous films is further developed in this short. Each of the three episodes acquired a different visual presentation. The first episode makes fun of the cinema (and its overstimulating effect), the second of the theatre (and its hypocrisy) and the third of the classical music (and its snobbism).
A genie arrives in New York City and grants three wishes to the owner of a plumbing supply store. Academy Award nominated for Best Short Film in 1971, at heart this is a tragi-comic story of the clash between generations.
In the offices of a prestigious New York daily, a junior editor and his veteran secretary are locked in a battle of wills over office culture. Will speed, efficiency and organisation win out, or are the old ways best? This short was Oscar nominated in 1999 and features a cameo performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman.
A leading director of the Czech film renaissance provides a philosophical meditation on life and death, set amidst complex hospital apparatus and the sadness, hope, or resignation of the patients. Existentialist rather than optimist, the approach is one of humanistic atheism, accepting death as part of life. Interviews with doctors and nurses explore their outlook; all speak of death as a fact, without either sentimentality or religiosity. The studied objectivity of the film only imperfectly hides an intense emotionality.
A live action viewpoint camera cuts between various mundane settings – children in a nursery, a house, office, workshop, church, hospital, farm, train and so on. The images are increasingly treated with effects, then shift to animation – showing rolling abstract patterns – before reverting back to live action, to be brought up short by a door with a notice pinned to it: “Stop! Entrance Prohibited”.
Scissors dance like a ballet dancer on sheets of paper. She carves the sun, the flower, the fish. The boy needs new toys. Scissors offers colored cubes and patterned balls. And then she cuts out the girl. A naughty boy wants all the toys for himself. The girl is offended and hides. The boy understands that being alone is boring. Then the scissors cut out many more boys and girls. The fun games begin.
A bittersweet musical drama set in London centers around a dejected jazz musician who is on the edge. He perceives a cold, black and white existence. In his heart there remains a ray of hope that will transport him to a warm and colorful world. Through the music, his spirit is renewed, if only for an instant, at the end of the rainbow.