Artsfest Film Festival: Experimental Short Films

100 Years of Movies recently took a break from our chronological project to attend the Artsfest Film Festival in Harrisburg. The film festival is programed by the folks at Moviate and ran from May 27 through May 30.

The experimental short session included films ranging from 2 to 13 minutes long. My favorite was easily Slow Fall by Neil Ira Needleman. Using the color palette of autumn as well as some sparse imaginings of branches, Needleman evokes a season that looks ablaze one moment and barren the next. The film brings a sensation of floating and the reflection of colors against the water. It's beautiful to look at and paced well.

Memento Mori by Scott Klinger is the longest of the bunch and follows a woman through a burned out landscape while she reflects on times before some unseen catastrophe. The images of the woman are rendered in a very cinematic black and white which contrasts starkly with the home video quality of her memories. The thoughts themselves seem to bid her farewell as she heads for the ocean and her end. The film makes you think about as you reach the end of your life. Haunting and beautiful.

Christine Lucy Latimer brought three shorts to the festival. The only one I enjoyed was Focus. In it, Latimer takes frames of Super 8 and places them individually on frames of 16mm. The resulting 2 minute film requires the audience to concentrate in order to follow the jumping image at the center of the screen. For me the effect both made me aware I was watching a piece of celluloid, breaking the illusion we experience in most trips to the multiplex. It also made the audience work to understand the images, providing a potent counterpoint on how simple and easy the typical moviegoing experience has become.

Memento Mori

The first film shown was Format, where Latimer shows a Super 8 film on a wall and then films that before pulling the camera back to film the LCD screen on another video camera. It's 4 minutes, but feels like it's twice as long and is too on-the-nose to have an impact. In her third film, Fruit Flies, she mounted a collection of dead fruit flies from her kitchen on film and unspooled that for two minutes. It's better than Format, but it feels like more of an exercise than a film. That said, it's the best film featuring fruit fly carcasses I have ever seen.

Fever Dream by Kevin Vogrin follows a woman through a vaguely winter cityscape. It evokes the disorientation the main character's feeling and keeps the audience unsettled. The swirling camera makes it hard to focus on anything except the occasional random shot of Santa Claus. That said, at seven minutes, it feels a little too long.

Winged by Jennifer Hardacker views two young boys through the eyes of their mother. The film juxtaposes images of young birds with the children. We see predators whose shadow threatens them. It's beautifully realized, but inclusion of text from a horoscope took me out of the imagery of the film.

VAN GOGH'S GARDEN by Warren Bass is a fun distillation of Van Gogh's color palette set to a bouncy score. For the three minutes it's on, it washes over you. The mood dissipates as quickly as it arrives.

Cloud and Bird and Birds at Night (Might Fall) are animations by American animator Bridget Riversmith. The first is a (primarily) black and white film that uses images of a rabbit in a meadow and a bird soaring amongst the clouds to evoke a Japanese haiku. The second follows a couple who fall asleep while driving and turn into birds as their car plummets over a cliff. I liked Birds at Night (Might Fall) more, particularly the way it was animated (the subtle change that turns arms into wings for example).

The session ended with Deux Petits Bateaux a cut out animation that follows a couple as they dance to phonograph on their boat. When the record player goes overboard, the sea life joins in the dance party. There was a whimsy and imagination to the film, particularly with little touches like the musical notes constructed from sea shells. It's a light, fun short and the perfect sorbet before heading into another round of movies.

Below are embedded versions of some of the films:

Fruit Flies:


Format:

Format from Christine Lucy Latimer on Vimeo.

Focus:

Focus from Christine Lucy Latimer on Vimeo.

Fever Dream:



Cloud and Bird Trailer:


Birds at Night (Might Fall) Trailer:


Deux Petits Bateaux

Deux Petits Bateaux from Kate Raney on Vimeo.