Shorts List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol 2)

[starmanof51]

Perhaps nothing there would rate, but I'd like to at least mention the Prelinger Archive, much or all of which is controlled by the Library of Congress and available to view freely through www.archive.org. Many of you may be familiar with it, but for those who aren't its a collection of educational, marketing, and industrial films, or "Ephemeral" films, as the old Voyager laserdisc would have it.

My favorite from that disc, and part of the Prelinger archive is "Design For Dreaming" (Beaudine, '56). Impossible to think of it as not hugely influenced by the dance/music/fantasy fusions of Powell and Pressburger - Hoffmann and Red Shoes, naturally. Once seen, it's hard to forget.

[zedz]

About a week to go. If I don't get a lot more submissions in that time this is going to be the strangest list we've ever had!

[lazier than a toad]

A few more:

Hold Me While I'm Naked (Kuchar, 1966) (Bfi VHS, Ubu Web)

The War Game (Watkins, 1965) (Bfi, New Yorker)

Five Feet High and Rising (Sollett, 2000) (Momentum's Raising Victor Vargas disc)

The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)

La Ricotta (Pasolini, 1963) (Tartan)

And I remeber seeing a short animation called "Man With the Blue Eyes" or something similar, about the neighbourhood kids' fascination with their neghbour who their parents tell them to stay away from.

Anybody seen this? When they describe his stubble the animator just shows black lines wiggling on a white screen.

[Steven H]

I'm trying to fit as much as I can in the next week. I have a list, but I'm not happy with about a fifth of it (high quality films, but not *great*). Some favorites from the Unseen Cinema collection (so far): The Fortune Teller (Jerome Hill, 1932), Impossible Convict (G.W. "Billy" Bitzer, 1905), Tomatos Another Day (JS Watson & Alec Wilder), and Jack's Dream (Joseph Cornell, 1938). I'm only through the second disc of this, can't wait for the rest.

My absolutely favorite is Tomatos Another Day, which is just fantastic. I guess I've seen enough early sound film to really connect with its satire, but its also just perfectly put together in such a bizarre unique way. It has awkward pauses, graceless acting, and timing/editing that's as self-aware and modern as any of the new wavers. The more I think about it, the more likely its going higher in my estimation.

Just about every film on the Kino Avant-Garde set is on my rough draft list. A few that I hope everyone gets a chance to see: Alexieff's The Nose (which dwarfs his more well known Night on Bald Mountain, and is my favorite Gogol adaptation), Christopher MacLaine's The End (for fans of Maya Deren and early Anger, beat film poetry at its best), Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving, Norstein's Hedgehog in the Fog, Jacques Drouhin's Mindscape, and The Metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa by Caroline Leaf.

[Gropius]

The War Game (Watkins, 1965) (Bfi, New Yorker)

That's longer than 40 minutes, otherwise it would have been on my list as well.

[Person]

Jan Lenica's, Labirynt (1963, color, 15 mins).

View at You Tube: Part 1 - Part 2

Mesmerizing.

[denti alligator]

Has anyone mentioned Cronenberg's Camera?

[Cinesimilitude]

Gondry is a master of the short subject, indeed.

I'd also like to put forth Truffaut's Antoine and Collette, and Sean Ellis' Cashback (the feature film version is also fantastic).

[zedz]

A little flurry of recent activity means that the final list is going to look much less eccentric, but, as expected, there's a huge diversity of titles nominated, so I hope participants will be expatiating on their also-rans after the votes are counted. There are far fewer accessible road maps to this sort of work, and a far smaller canon, so I for one am looking forward to hearing more about the many mystery films.

I've just made my way through Kino's second Avant Garde set. I only hope they keep this up, as it's one of the most exciting current retrospective DVD projects. The biggest surprise (apart from Venom and Eternity, which is beside the point in this thread) was Brakhage's Unglassed Windows Cast a Terrible Reflection. It's the most dramatic, narrative film of his I've seen (as opposed to the psychodramatic ones), and it makes the case that he could have gone on from this to make fantastic B movies. We can be grateful that he didn't, but it's nevertheless a fascinating might-have-been. It would make a great short for Pitfall.

Also well worth checking out are a late Kirsanov, Mitry's iconic Pacific 231, and the canonical Geography of the Body. On the downside, we get yet another opportunity to see Watson and Webber's Fall of the House of Usher, in the event the buyer has been living under a rock for five years (at least it's not Hearts of Age), but on the upside, neither of the two essential James Broughton films were on the fine Facets set (three words you won't often hear in a row) and all four Brakhages are unCriterionized.

[Greathinker]

Here's two masterpieces in short animation:

Der Schneeman Hans Fischerkoesen 1943

One Froggy Evening Chuck Jones 1955

[Awesome Welles]

Anyone wanting a last minute catch up please note that I have collected links to a few shorts here.

[Steven H]

After the list is tallied, I'd like to hear from people about what films were in the 40 to 50 min range, which were unfortunately neglected. Two films that are *extremely* high in my estimation (and before I checked their times, both just slightly over 40 min) which I had pegged as early top ten candidates, are Bunuel's Simon of the Desert and Jissouji Akio's When Twilight Draws Near. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the Bunuel, but the Jissouji is a subtle, poetic, and slightly surreal drama that takes place in a single room with a small group of young people (mostly about claustrophobia, human relationships, sex, aggression, all those fun things.) Beautifully shot (as are most of Jissoji's "art" projects) and, for what its worth, it was originally shown as a double feature with Oshima Nagisa's Diary of a Shinjuku Thief.

[yoshimori]

Jissouji Akio's When Twilight Draws Near.

I've seen a lot of excellent Jissouji but not this one. Is it somehow available?

[Awesome Welles]

After the list is tallied, I'd like to hear from people about what films were in the 40 to 50 min range, which were unfortunately neglected.

I can say right now that the only omission I have made in this category is Vigo's Zero de conduite I haven't really seen much else in this category but would also be interested to hear people's thoughts.

Jissouji is a subtle, poetic, and slightly surreal drama that takes place in a single room with a small group of young people

This sounds very interesting, where can it be seen [online]?

[Steven H]

Jissouji Akio's When Twilight Draws Near.

I've seen a lot of excellent Jissouji but not this one. Is it somehow available?

It came on a disc, with two or three other of his short films, in that big unsubtitled box set (which is now out of print, according to cdjapan.) Its now available seperately here. In my opinion, its an early watermark for him (can't hurt that it was co-written by Oshima.)

This sounds very interesting, where can it be seen [online]?

No clue. I don't even think its something you can illegally download. Its not listed on imdb, but there's a mention at the BFI database here.

[zedz]

My big 40+ minute regret was Greenaway's A Walk through H (41 minutes!). But a lot of my other favourite films in that time range (Simon of the Desert, Sherlock Jr, Zero de conduite, Sink or Swim, American Boy, for starters) seem to me much more like extremely short features, and not reasonably part of a shorts list. The Greenaway, on the other hand, feels like a short film to me, hence the regret.

And actually, there are a couple of 'short features' that scrape in under 40 minutes that I included on my list but which seem like grown-ups sneaking into a children's party, Elephant and Menilmontant being the most obvious examples. In both cases I did a bit of a double take when I checked their running times.

[Steven H]

I hadn't really considered the Vigo or Sherlock Jr because, like you, I considered them more like short features. The Jissouji most definitely has that "short film" feel (its heavily stylized and slightly unreal), and I think I can say the same for Simon the Desert. It feels like a short film, especially the ending. It plays on similar themes of repetition that a lot of short films do, building a rhythm, more like songs.

[zedz]

I hadn't really considered the Vigo or Sherlock Jr because, like you, I considered them more like short features. The Jissouji most definitely has that "short film" feel (its heavily stylized and slightly unreal), and I think I can say the same for Simon the Desert. It feels like a short film, especially the ending. It plays on similar themes of repetition that a lot of short films do, building a rhythm, more like songs.

I'd split the difference on Simon. I definitely take your point about the variations + capping twist structure, which is a classic short film strategy, but it also seems closely aligned to Bunuel's more discursive features. So maybe it's less like a short feature than an unfinished feature (maybe it was - just had a faint memory twinge) - it could easily have been built up with further episodes / variations, which wouldn't have made it too much different from Bunuel's other 'episodic' features (Exterminating Angel, Discreet Charm etc.)

[Steven H]

Yeah, now that you mention it a lot of Bunuel's films feel like long short films (however ridiculous that might sound.) I believe it was considered "unfinished", but I've always loved the ending, and considered it one of his best.

[zedz]

Yeah, now that you mention it a lot of Bunuel's films feel like long short films (however ridiculous that might sound.) I believe it was considered "unfinished", but I've always loved the ending, and considered it one of his best.

Depending on the weather, it's my favourite Bunuel, and a large part of that is the wild beatnik ending. Who else would drive their film into a swimming pool like that?

[Steven H]

Yeah, now that you mention it a lot of Bunuel's films feel like long short films (however ridiculous that might sound.) I believe it was considered "unfinished", but I've always loved the ending, and considered it one of his best.

Depending on the weather, it's my favourite Bunuel, and a large part of that is the wild beatnik ending. Who else would drive their film into a swimming pool like that?

Hah! Great way to put it. A friend stole my copy of The Last Sigh, but I think I remember Bunuel saying it was his favorite, or *a* favorite. By the way, I watched a ton of shorts today, but only one has transplanted something on my list: Living by Franz Zwartjes (1971). Genius!

[Gropius]

My big 40+ minute regret was Greenaway's A Walk through H (41 minutes!).

My choice would have been Vertical Features Remake; as it was, I settled with H is for House (also toyed with Water Wrackets). Other 40+ misses were Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus (41 mins) and Michael Snow's Wavelength (45 mins), both from 1967.

I'm interested that you make the distinction between shorts and 'extremely short features'. Surely the only absolute criterion for a 'short film' is an (arbitrarily) decreed cap on length? In my own viewing lists, I classify shorts as anything up to 50 mins, mainly because I can't be bothered with the category of 'medium length'; some people cut it off at 30.

[zedz]

I'm interested that you make the distinction between shorts and 'extremely short features'. Surely the only absolute criterion for a 'short film' is an (arbitrarily) decreed cap on length? In my own viewing lists, I classify shorts as anything up to 50 mins, mainly because I can't be bothered with the category of 'medium length'; some people cut it off at 30.

Essentially, it all ends up arbitrary, and I'd normally go for 30 minutes, probably since, in terms of programming, it's extremely difficult to put something longer than that in front of a feature. I think of films in that no-man's-land between 30 and 60 minutes as 'mules' that need to find a sympathetic mate if they're to have any hope of being programmed.

Going back to the former discussion, to me some films do seem more feature-like and some more short-like. I think it boils down to density of narrative and ideas. For me, a classic short explores a strong single idea (examples of this from my list would include Svankmajer's Darkness Light Darkness and Michel Gondry's Come into my World, which construct impossible worlds / situations and follow through on their implications, Farrokhzad's The House Is Black - an amazingly rich film, but not a complicated one in terms of content, Scorpio Rising etc.), often taking the form of an anecdote with a point (e.g. El Cabina's urban-legend-in-waiting, Film, plenty of silent comedy shorts).

The feature characteristics I'm thinking about are more sprawling or complex narratives, with multiple characters or subplots, or which juggle lots of different ideas. When potentially feature-length material is condensed into a short form through radical technique, the effect can be exhilarating (Menilmontant, Heart of the World, Sink or Swim, My Ain Folk, Tale of Tales, maybe Street of Crocodiles), and it's not hard to imagine similar content expanded to an hour or more. An hour-long Darkness Light Darkness, on the other hand, would test even Svankmajer's resourcefulness. Several 'featuresque' shorts have indeed been expanded to feature length (often with diminishing returns): e.g. La Jetee, The Wrong Trousers.

It's more instinctual than the above implies, however, and I consider Elephant as a short feature rather than a long short even though it's entirely predicated on the structural simplicity I've attributed to shorts. Maybe it's because I see this as more of a Jansco-like anti-narrative; maybe it's because the film is so relentlessly assaultive that I can never believe it's taken up so little of my life.

Of course, in these distinctions we're really referencing narrative film. And a vast amount of the films we're considering here don't fall into that category (all those Brakhages). When you're getting into more abstract territory, length is even more arbitrary, and may be more a factor of labour than of aesthetics.

[yoshimori]

A few "suggestions/reminders" for last-minute voters.

Kuchar, George 1977 "Wild Night in El Reno" - best weather movie
Conner, Bruce 1966 "Breakaway" - my favorite music video
Fensler, Eric 2002 "G.I. Joe" remixes - don't know if these count; probably available on line somewhere; hilarious
O'Neill, Patrick 1995 "Trouble in the Image"
Corbijn, Anton 1999 "Opus 40" - another mvid
Maddin, Guy 2000 "The Heart of the World"
Brakhage, Stan 1990 "Passage Through: A Ritual"- 99% black screen

Lotsa others, but these were in my top 10 or so and will likely be orphaned unless someone else decides to love them too. So sad. Tant pis pour moi. :(

[Oedipax]

Awesome suggestions, yoshimori - "Breakaway" is amazing, and the G.I. Joe Fensler films are twisted and brilliant. I think they had copyright problems, but I'm sure they survive online somewhere. I've got downloaded copies of all 20 or so.