Anthems for a Short Film Fan

Best of the Month, Short Film Stars at the Theater, Plus Links You Should Check Out

Author

Jason Sondhi
May 03, 2024

It was the rarest of sights last night. At a swanky private screening, I saw a music/performance/vanity short film project for a celebrated artist that was actually beautiful and moving! Thanks to SMUGGLER for the invite. It’s left me buzzed and thinking anything is possible—even me getting this newsletter out vaguely on time. 😎 

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

 Sit Down, Don't Touch Anything by Frederic Siegel

A face is born out of chaos. It struggles to exist. It struggles to find its purpose. It struggles to sit on a chair. In fact, it struggles with a lot of things. But thank god, it’s trying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Piscine Pro (Pro Pool) by Alec Pronovost

Freshly graduated with a bachelor's degree in history and civilization, Charles-Olivier struggles to find a job in his field and must rely on a clerk job in a pool shop. Feeling down, he navigates his gig as best he can.

Kodar: The Primordial God of Light and Ether by Will Ropp

A Short Film starring Maddie Ziegler, about a doctor who dresses up for Halloween but then has to deliver bad news.

Ghost of You by Chloe Xtina

At the apex of a heatwave and California’s fire season, 16-year-old Mae and her sisters become prey to a hidden camera at their hometown creek.

Best of the Month: April 2024

Shorts films by Timi Akindele-Ajani, Austrian Collective Total Refusal & Frederic Siegel feature in Short of the Week's Best of the Month picks for April.

🪐 In the Shortverse

New work from the Oscar-nominated team of Job, Joris, & Marieke

Best of the Month is back with 11 shorts new to the network in April!

A horror take on Spiderman that is attracting attention on YouTube

🎟 Short Film Stars at the Theater

An unusual amount of new releases in US theaters this weekend come from filmmakers best known for their short-form work. Buy a ticket and see something!

  • Texan filmmaker and Short Award winner Katherine Propper (Birds) opens her feature debut, Lost Soulz, in LA and NY via Kino Lorber. She writes about her journey for Talkhouse this week.

  • Tarot is a new horror flick from Sony Pictures and opens wide. S/W alums Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg (Blink) direct, while friend-of-the-site Scott Glassgold produces. Watch the Trailer.

  • Also going wide is We Grown Now, the second feature from Minhal Baig, after having been in limited release for a couple of weeks. Minhal gave a recent interview to Filmmaker Magazine.

  • One of the internet’s most beloved cult animations is 2011’s horror music video for the track “Fantasy” from Dye. French animator Jérémie Périn directed it and now his feature debut, Mars Express arrives nationwide thanks to Gkids.

  • Lastly, before Jane Schoenbrun hooked up with A24 and became the poster-child for internet-weird filmmaking, they were responsible for producing Collective: Unconscious and The Eyeslicer, classics of…internet-weird filmmaking! Jane’s second feature as a director hits NY and LA this week before going wide and the commissioned Broken Social Scene cover song from yeule embedded above has been stuck in my head for a month straight now.

📅 Upcoming Festival Deadlines

Bend Film Festival | Shortverse

The Academy qualifying 21st annual Bend Film Festival is confirmed to take place October 10th-13th 2024!

www.shortverse.com/festivals/bend-film-festival

LA Shorts International Film Festival

Now in its 28th year, LA Shorts is the longest-running short film festival in Los Angeles. The festival screens over 350 films and attracts over 10,000 attendees each year including Hollywood industry professionals and emerging independent filmmakers.

https://www.shortverse.com/festivals/lashortsfest

Bolton International Film Festival

Bolton International Film Festival is proud to be one of the Top 10 short film festivals in the UK and accredited by both BAFTA and BIFA

www.shortverse.com/festivals/boltonfilmfestival

Salute Your Shorts Festival

We curate an intimate lineup of stellar shorts from around the world in every genre, showcasing them to a community of artists seeking inspiration and conversation. Selected films will enjoy an audience of working entertainment industry professionals and compete for cash and prize packages and an Academy Award®-Qualifying Theatrical run.

www.shortverse.com/festivals/saluteyourshortsfest

New Orleans Film Festival

The Oscar-qualifying New Orleans Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in the American Southeast, serving audiences numbering upwards of 30,000, hosting as many as 500 filmmakers, and providing cash awards and prizes valued at over $150,000.

www.shortverse.com/festivals/neworleansfilmfestival

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

  1. A new Wes Anderson brand film drops.

  2. Alums Tomisin Adepeju and Dumas Haddad headline a series of great-looking workshops for DAILIES in London this Sunday, 5/5

  3. Also in London, the eminent Stephen Follows is leading a workshop to make sense of AI Filmmaking this Wed. May 8th.

  4. Disney Launchpad Season 3 is open for applications. A short film incubator from the Mouse House focused on underrepresented filmmakers, alums like Erica Eng and Aqsa Altaf have benefitted from the program in prior seasons.

  5. 19 yr old Wesley Wang saw his short go viral on YouTube, attract Darren Aronofsky as a mentor, and now spark a bidding war to adapt. You can watch the film on Shortverse.

  6. Illogic Studios, made up of the team behind the recent classic short Garden Party have released a 3min teaser of their upcoming feature film project.

  7. How did TIFF’s Lightbox Become its Money Pit?

  8. The Diminishing Returns of Having Good Taste

  9. Vimeo’s new CEO with a statement on AI: “…we have not trained any generative AI models with content hosted on Vimeo to date.”

  10. Amidst an epidemic of vanity credits, a crusade to create a new credit for producers that actually produce.