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A Belated Giving of Thanks
Spotlighting the short filmmaker behind Apple's season-best advert and an alum in the cross-hairs of scandal! Plus picks and what we're thankful for.
Jason Sondhi
November 24, 2023
Thanksgiving came and went without acknowledgment on Short of the Week and Shortverse. It’s a huge holiday here, but much of our team and audience is outside the USA so making a big fuss has always felt weird. However, I was able to take the day off and enjoy time with my family, so I thank Rob for keeping the trains running editorially.
You know what? That felt good. Let’s keep going! I’m thankful to Andy who has been my partner in this sometimes quixotic endeavor for over 16 years, and for all the team members, past and present, who’ve made this project go. I’m thankful to all the filmmakers for following their dreams because their films are the basis for everything we do. And it goes without saying that I’m thankful to those creators who choose to trust us with their work—I hope we can continue to promote them with a thoughtfulness and impact that honors that trust.
And of course, to everyone who reads, watches, follows, or shares the work we do, none of it makes sense without you! So here’s a BIG THANK YOU too. 🙏🏽
📅 This Week on Short of the Week
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On Monday we featured this film from Matt Inns. We could extol its virtues intellectually (and Rob does some of that in his review) but sometimes it’s more honest to simply describe a film’s lizard-brain appeal — “Less than 60 seconds into its 15-minute run-time, after witnessing its helmeted protagonist almost blow themselves up with a stick of dynamite and a gun, I knew I wasn’t going to be disappointed.”
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Teased in last week’s edition of this newsletter, this animated award-winner at Flickerfest and Aspen comes from Alec Green and Finbar Watson who tell the story of a man whose good deeds have made him “somewhat of a folk tale” in his native Australia. They recruit top-notch collaborators in actor Hugo Weaving who narrates, as well as S/W alum Alan Holly as Art Director, and Céline commends the tone of the film for handling its difficult subject matter in a way that’s respectful, but still emotionally potent.
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Céline then welcomed Jonny Look back to S/W with his latest film that explores the complexities of the creative process via surreal comedy. Rick-A-Doo is a musician desperate for a comeback, so he turns to his best friend, Archie, a worm living in his sock drawer, for help. Blending live-action & puppetry, plus featuring the voice of celebrated musician Mac Demarco, the film takes its insane premise seriously, resulting in a surprisingly heartfelt journey.
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The danger of Google self-diagnosis is succinctly relayed (to grotesque effect) in this energetic animation from Kelly Schiesswohl. Count Serafima as impressed, as she calls the 4-minute film, “a dazzling labour of love with every scene so overloaded with visual and auditory information that it might require a second or even a third watch to fully process and appreciate – not a bad thing considering how unique and disturbingly delightful the animation is.”
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Céline closes out her MVP performance this week with her third review, this one on the latest short from rising UK documentary star Jessica Bishopp. Picked up by The New Yorker for award-season contention, the film deftly weaves its conservation message into, “a compelling and multilayered coming-of-age narrative between the girls, the young birds, and their island.”
🍿 New releases you’ve been enjoying…
I really like the work of Stephen Stinson, who makes slow-food documentary profiles about creative types in a way that is curious and insightful to their art but also to them as people. To Be Enjoyed is his latest, which dropped online this week and is worth checking out.
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Anna Mantzaris is a previous Short Award winner (Enough), and an increasingly accomplished commercial director. This year she landed a hi-profile gig providing Animation Direction to Apple’s holiday ad and boy oh boy does she hit it out of the park. Blending live-action with stop-motion, and cheerfully dark comedy with the season’s more usual sentiments of togetherness and good cheer, the 4-minute advert is accomplished commercial storytelling.
Speaking of which, we used to cover holiday ads in a yearly editorial feature, but haven’t for a while. Would you like us to bring it back? Reply to this email to let us know, or if you have a tip on an advert we should cover!
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🎟 Coming soon that we’re excited about…
We’re excited to soon share this short that plays on the bleeding edge of filmmaking technology. A live-action, virtual production hybrid, FLITE is from Tim Webber, Chief Creative Officer for the famous VFX house Framestore, and an Oscar-winner for his work on 2013’s Gravity. Utilizing live-action, LED Volume screens, motion capture, and Unreal Engine, Tim and his team have experimented with a pipeline that creates the most life-like CG characters we’ve ever seen. A recent winner of “Best Genre Short” at Hollyshorts, FLITE arrives online December 1st.
📖 Weekly Longread
Let’s just say that if John Carreyrou, the investigative journalist who broke the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos case, is writing about you, that’s a bad sign. Unfortunately, his latest subject is S/W alum Carl Erik Rinsch, who we featured way back in 2010.
What Carreyrou reports makes for a pretty wild read, and also lends credence to speculation that, during the height of the streaming wars, due diligence over what got greenlit was not always…rigorous.
Still, while the details are juicy, and the behavior erratic, we don’t want to pile on Rinsch too much as he sounds legitimately unwell. Simply, if we are indeed moving towards a new paradigm for TV/Film production this is a fascinating dispatch on the excesses of the era we’re leaving behind.
That’s it for this week! Happy Holiday weekend for those celebrating and tune in next week for more short film goodness.