Tony Altamirano’s film as been an official selection at the New York City International Film Festival 2011, Beverly Hills Shorts Fest 2011, Capital City Film Fest 2011, and the San Francisco Frozen Film Fest 2011. It’s a neat little science fiction surprise with a twist. I like its point of view on the imagination’s ability to transform reality even while putting one in mortal danger.
Orhan Basara of Ankara, Turkey made this film that quietly observes a man who seems to have forgotten what is most important to him. The film is beautifully shot and edited, telling its simple story with great a depth of feeling that is tinged with gentle humor. The only character in the film is perfectly portrayed by Ali Dusenkalkar.
This is the 2011 Oscar winning short animation, ‘The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.’ It’s the first film from Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was co-directed by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
The film is also an iPad app that combines animation with an interactive picture book narrative.
Artist Michael Heizer’s enormous new work on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art required a 340-ton boulder as its centerpiece. The boulder had to be transported over 100 miles from its quarry. At first, I was very interested in this rock. It’s huge! But soon I became more interested in the city’s reaction to the rock. So this film documents the final few miles of the rock’s journey, but it also documents the people who came out to be a part of the great Los Angeles rock transport. The film is part documentary and part personal impression. The simple fact of the matter is that the rock’s arrival is an unusual milestone in the life of this city. You can tell that simply by looking at the faces in my film.
Photographer David Gillanders of Scotland made this film from his work photographing the homeless children of Ukraine. It was produced by Britain’s Channel 4. The drug addiction and desperate living conditions make for a very upsetting experience. It is difficult to imagine how children can be allowed to slip below the streets to live in sewers. It is an unforgivable sin in any civilization to allow this to happen to its children. Most of these kids are now dead.
It seems to me a worthy form of journalism that straightforwardly documents suffering that is being experienced by the most helpless members of a population.
Thank you to Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds.
Here’s a short film from Beijing, China directed by Joewi Verhoeven. It’s an odd and discomforting tale about a solitary writer whose fictional world is intruding upon the real world. The film is a quiet and focused examination of a writer’s creative doubts and fears. I particularly like the bit where a Chinese policeman who is a friend of the writer comes over and can’t seem to see the dead body that is perhaps a result of the unrestricted imagination of the writer. The film also has a lovely soft celluloid look even though it was shot entirely on a Canon DSLR. Also, pay attention to the beautiful and eerie background audio.