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Home > Filmmaker Resources and Information > Shorts
THE OSCARS
Shortlists for the categories Best Animated Short and Best Live Action Short are made up of prizewinners from the following festivals. Note that this list of festivals may change without notice.
Academia de Las Artes y Ciencias Cinematograficas de España
Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma (César)
Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (Genie)
Ann Arbor (Michigan) Film Festival
Annecy Festival International Du Cinema D'animation
Aspen Shortsfest
Athens (Ohio) International Film Festival
Atlanta Film Festival
Austin Film Festival
Berlin International Film Festival
Bermuda International Film Festival
Bilbao International Festival of Documentary & Short Films
Black Maria Film Festival
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards
Cannes Festival International Du Film
Cartagena International Film Festival
Chicago International Children's Film Festival
Chicago International Film Festival
Cinanima International Animation Film Festival
Cinequest Film Festival
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival
Cracow International Festival of Short Films
David Di Donatello Award
European Film Awards
Festival de Cine de Huesca
Flickerfest
Florida Film Festival
Foyle Film Festival
Gijon International Film Festival for Young People
The Hamptons International Film Festival
Hiroshima International Animation Festival
India International Film Festival
Locarno International Film Festival
Los Angeles Film Festival
Los Angeles International Short Film Festival
Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival
Melbourne International Film Festival
Montreal International Festival of New Cinema
Montreal World Film Festival
Nashville Film Festival
Oberhausen International Short Film Festival
Ottawa International Animation Festival
Palm Springs International Short Film Festival
Rhode Island International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Short Shorts Film Festival
Shorts International Film Festival
Siggraph
Slamdance Film Festival
St. Louis International Film Festival
Stuttgart International Animation Festival
Sundance Film Festival
Sydney Film Festival
Tampere Film Festival
Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival
Turin International Film Festival of Young Cinema
Uppsala International Short Film Festival
USA Film Festival
Venice International Film Festival
World Animation Celebration (Los Angeles)
Zagreb World Festival Of Animated Films
REEL NORTH
A new programme for broadcast in April 2003, dedicated to showcasing independent short films from North West England and beyond. Read more...
NOT LONG NOW
Short films are being showered with funds - public and private.
Shame so much of the cash is wasted on stars
by Steve Rose
The Guardian, 5 March 2003
Describing his directing debut, a short film called Bone, Ewan McGregor explained how his excitement dissipated the moment he began shooting the first scene: a simple close-up of fingers drumming on a piece of paper on a tube platform. It took nine takes, he said. And each time, the train passing in the background had to be reversed up the tunnel and driven past again. "You spunk all your time on something and then leave nothing for stuff you were supposed to be doing later in the day," he concluded.
Boom time for shorts
McGregor's film was part of a set of shorts funded by Sky TV called Tube Tales, which also showcased the directing talents of Jude Law and Bob Hoskins. Predictably, the results were painfully amateurish, and plans for a cinema release were quietly shelved. Even so, short films are booming again in Britain. The Film Council is sponsoring a wide assortment of schemes that will produce more than 100 shorts a year, and private companies are also investing heavily in shorts projects and competitions.
A proving-ground for new talent
In terms of finding and nurturing new talent, this makes perfect sense. From Ridley Scott to Lynne Ramsay, there are few successful British directors who didn't start out on shorts. The financial risk is relatively low (though you're still probably looking at a minimum outlay of £30,000 for a 35mm project), and with a shorter production schedule there's more chance of recruiting some prestige actors. And the proliferation of festivals (such as Bristol's Brief Encounters and London's Rushes), websites, TV slots and even the return of shorts to regular cinemas, means there are more chances to get the films seen than ever before.
Two steps to an Oscar?
Shorts are often being used to groom established talent from other disciplines. Renowned comics writer Neil Gaiman, for example, already has a feature deal with Warners to direct his own script for Death: The High Cost of Living. First, though, he is learning the ropes with a short film about comic artist John Bolton, made with Guy Ritchie's SKA films. It will be released on DVD in the near future. This is a strategy that has worked in the past. Former theatre director Stephen Daldry was given a prize-winning short-film script to cut his teeth with, and the result, Eight, was effectively a rehearsal for his feature debut, Billy Elliot. One film later, he is Britain's best hope for an Oscar.
Sometimes it's who you know
The Film Council is also gambling on star power. Its New Cinema Fund, in partnership with FilmFour Lab, has £500,000 a year with which to "encourage directors, producers and other creative talent to push their creative boundaries." Three of the first four films in its flagship Extreme Cinema strand are by celebrity non-directors: The League of Gentlemen co-writer Jeremy Dyson, actor Jodhi May, and fashion photographer Rankin. None of them displays any great promise, it has to be said. Dyson's is an unengaging gothic horror comedy, May's is a confusing adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story, and Rankin's resembles a Dazed and Confused shoot come to life. How or why these particular novices were selected is not clear, though the production notes for May's film reveal that she voiced her directing ambitions to the producer of a feature film she was acting in, and he secured funding from Film Four Lab.
Celebrity directors...
Celebrities from other fields, particularly television comedy, have been more successful. Another of the New Cinema Fund strands, Comedy Shorts, invited established comedy writers to try their hand at directing, and the first four short films make their public debut next Monday. Best of the bunch is Hello Friend, a nightmarish information-age satire directed by Graham Linehan, writer of Father Ted and Black Books. Similarly, record label Warp's decision to finance Chris Morris's directing debut My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 looks to have paid off. Although the 15-minute film was rumoured to have cost more than £150,000, the reputation Morris has acquired through TV shows like Brass Eye guaranteed public interest from the outset (the same could be said of artist Tracey Emin's planned feature based on her life story). My Wrongs won this year's short film BAFTA and has been well received as a retail DVD release, and Morris is now exploring feature ideas. Meanwhile, Warp is also talking to another apprentice director: Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.
...and a celebrity-free zone
With the UK industry in its current state, perhaps nobody should be denied the chance to make a short. But non-celebrity directors are questioning whether the stars really deserve the chance to try a career change, or whether their brand recognition has simply blinded producers to their lack of potential.
Promising unknown directors should still get their chance, though. Perhaps chastened by its experiments with Rankin, Dyson and May, the Film Council's new slate of Cinema Extreme films, which will premiere at this year's Edinburgh film festival, is celebrity-free. Likewise, Sky has long since slain the ghost of Tube Tales with an annual shorts competition for unknown directors, now in its fourth year.
The new Jackie Chan?
Sky could have already found Britain's answer to Jackie Chan: Ara Paiaya, whose no-budget kung-fu spoof Dubbed and Dangerous has led to a part in a real Chan movie. Warp is also scouring the country for undiscovered amateurs, and believes there is the same potential for home-made digital movies as there was for bedroom-produced music 10 years ago. With so many people on the hunt, no talent should remain undiscovered.
DESKTOP ICONS
Small-screen wonders for big-screen entertainment
Desktop Icons is a touring programme of short digital films and videos by Scottish and international artists, exploring the crossover of popular culture, media and new creative technologies. The programme examines the new moving image authored on (and sometimes for) desktops. The quiet digital film revolution has created exciting possibilities for more experimental and edgy work, stretching the boundaries of what was once known as cinematic reality. Artists include Chris Cunningham, Kristin Lucas, Michael Maziere, Simon Ellis, Matt Hulse, Phil Collins, Richard Fenwick, and others from around the world.
Since its launch at the CCA, Glasgow in December 2001, Desktop Icons has been seen by hundreds of viewers in eight venues across the UK and internationally. Future touring destinations include Bristol, Derby, Brighton, Newcastle upon Tyne, Darmstadt, Germany; Chisinau, Moldova; Delhi, India; Dublin, Ireland and others. New Media Scotland website now offers German-speaking audiences access to the curatorial essay Desktop Iconography in German. Also, the Viennese writer and journalist Thomas Ballhausen reflects on the use of narrative in the Desktop Icons works in his essay Storytelling 2.0, available in German and English at the website.
The programme is available to tour to venues in the UK and internationally. For booking details contact info@mediascot.org or Tel +44 (0)131 477 3774. For more information, view the website.
Desktop Icons is a New Media Scotland touring programme, curated by Iliyana Nedkova and funded by the Scottish Arts Council and the Arts Council of England. Supported by Anthony D'Offay Gallery, London; Electronic Arts termix, New York; Media Arts Academy, Cologne; Atelier Jeunes Cineastes, Brussels, Zenith Publishing, Cambridge and Partizan Midi Minuit, Paris.
HOW LONG IS A PIECE OF FILM?
by John Hardwick
British short films are a thriving and important part of this country's cultural production. They are produced here in large numbers and exhibited at festivals all over the world where they inform, entertain and frequently win prizes. If overseas audiences and juries are to be believed the British are considered to be good at making shorts. This is a flattering and healthy situation to be in and it is helpful to consider what has made it possible.
Firstly, funding in this country for shorts tends to be relatively accessible and adventurous (despite the demise of organisations such as the much missed BFI Production). Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the brief duration of the short film tends to encourage an idiosyncratic and energetic approach to filmmaking. This creative freedom naturally compares favourably to the stricter conventions that surround the full length feature.
With notable exceptions, feature film production in Britain has tended to mould itself around the monumental influence of its literary and theatrical antecedants. This has given rise to the prevailing orthodoxy that a feature film is a 90 minute morality tale told in three acts. A feature film, for many of us therefore, is merely a play with close ups.
Short films, on the other hand, have managed to avoid much of this narrative orthodoxy. Perhaps short films are more comparable to poetry than to plays. In the same way that poetry can bend language and suggest (rather than declare) meaning, short films are able to explore the vocabulary of cinema and emphasise mood over narrative structure. Clearly there are many ways to skin a cat but short films do tend to revolve around the single idea or event. A woman wakes up to discover she has become monochromatic in a world that remains coloured; a man has to balance caring for his son against attending a job interview. Both these scenarios are simple, contained cameos - an idea worked out, a portrait concluded - and both have cut their cloth correctly. They are ideas that wouldn't make the finishing line in a feature film but work well enough for the duration of a short.
Short films work best when they are courageous and prepared to experiment. A short film does not have to tell a story. It can be a rant, a joke, a journey, an essay, a poem, a portrait, a painting, a piss take.
Short films also work well clubbed together and always have done. From the early 8mm film societies where hobbyists would gather to view each other's home movies to the underground cinema clubs that currently blend film, video, performance and polemic, the short has always been the tool of the personal filmmaker as opposed to the industrial filmmaker. Voices that are too idiosyncratic for the multiplexes find a raucous and demanding audience in the backrooms of pubs, and increasingly, in art galleries. Admittedly, the art gallery audiences are more reverential than raucous but they still represent the public hunger for innovative film and video work.
At the other end of the scale, cinemas have become passive, entertainment-obsessed palaces of consumption. Their mania for movie stars and big profits has resulted in the market being choked with identikit films that leave the viewer seriously undernourished.
It's high time we stopped genuflecting before the golden temple of features and realised instead that there are many different filmmaking and film viewing possibilities now available to us in this country.
We would do well to skip the local multiplex every once in a while in favour of our nearest film club. Whether it be in the back of a night club or the front of a disused shop, these societies provide some of the best places to satisfy our desire for original, provocative filmmaking. Filmmaking that showcases some of the best, least celebrated cinema talent in the U.K.
John Hardwick makes short films, pop videos and adverts. He is currently working on the special effects of a short drama entitled '33 x Around The Sun'.
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