Shorts

Animator Tiffany Tong won the Critics’ Choice Award at the last edition of Emerging Filmmakers Night for her short Moth. She tells us a bit more about the film and her background in animation. Moth is available to view online. There is so much to unpack in the 3 minute run-time of Moth. First of all, can you explain the choice of title? Moths are attracted to light, drawn to bright lights. It represents Hong Kong residents, seeking the light in the dark, like chasing hope in the dark. (…)

Zillah Bowes is a Welsh/English writer, director and photographer. She trained at the NFTS and has made films as a director and cinematographer, which have been shown worldwide. She won a John Brabourne Award from the Film and TV Charity in 2020. Her debut SMALL PROTESTS was nominated for a Grierson Award and won the Current Short Cuts Vimeo Award and Best Short Documentary at the London Independent Film Festival. As a cinematographer, her feature films include ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS, which (…)

In light of Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s participation at this year’s Semaine de la Critique in Cannes, we thought we’d publish this interview we conducted with her in collaboration with the Brasserie du Court at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, where her short Pauline Asservie was in competition. A quirky, touching yet highly amusing little film that encapsulated the skills Charline is now deploying fully in her most recent work.

This week, we thought we’d highlight this wonderfully engaging zero-budget short by Palestinian director Mo’min Swaitat free to watch on Youtube. Stones In Hand is an experimental docu-fiction based on the director’s experiences and memories of growing up in Jenin City in the West Bank. It’s an interesting and rough collage of archive footage, uprisings, scenes in London, music, and lengthier recollections based on the cast’s own memories of the homes they left behind, all combined to (…)

Johnny drives home late one evening to spend time with his wife. He runs her a bath and goes to the kitchen to pour them both a glass of wine. We hear the disembodied voice of the wife shouting from the bathroom about a call from a producer whilst Johnny’s mobile is being constantly called by a woman driving and begging to speak to him. Thus begins the film’s opening sequence before things start to get confusing... Damian Draven is a production designer and director, beginning his career (…)

Denis is the director of short film Savage, a dramatised account of the abhorrent but sadly little-known concept of human zoos, a practice that was part and parcel of Britain’s colonial empire. With great attention to detail and historical accuracy, Savage is an original, moving take on a phenomenon that plays an integral part in the development of modern institutionalised racism. Lead Florence Nzenwefi gives a touching and dignified performance as man cruelly uprooted from his home and (…)

Is your film mainly an account that you want handed down? How did you construct the voice-over? The film is essentially tied to my desire to breathe life back into the things that disappeared when the Guiana Space Centre was set up in Kourou in the 60s. To script the voice-over, we dipped into our close networks. For example, our father’s , who’s from Guiana himself. So we were able to exchange ideas in a trusting atmosphere, which helped elicit memories. We also met people whose families’ (…)

WATCH THE FILM BELOW! Is David based on anyone you know? Nope. My co-writer Brandon Gardner and I talked about lots of people we care about when we were writing. But there wasn’t one person in particular. What gave you the idea of setting the story at a therapist’s? My dad is a therapist and would sometimes get calls from patients in crisis when we were on family vacations. He’d have to walk far away, into the woods or down the beach or whatever, to talk to them. I always thought (…)

Why did you choose to revisit this – I presume traumatic – event as a short film? Actually, I am still trying to understand what I have done and why. However, I have held in these memories and feelings throughout these years with the purpose of sharing them in a short film. Other filmmakers might have already told this story differently, but I tried to use my own memories to show events that have happened. These events might not even feel as traumatic anymore, because I shared them with (…)

Do you have a particular interest in football? In your opinion, what place does football have in Tunisia? I am both a big fan of football as well as a critic of its excesses (the business of football, the political exploitation of football, the fanaticism of both the fans and the major actors in this sport, to cite a few examples). I often go to the stadium to watch my favorite team play but I don’t like to talk about football, and it annoys me when debates over football are put front and (…)