One 🎂

Shortverse reaches a milestone and rolls out a big new feature. Animation fans are in for a few great weeks, and we celebrate alum distro news

Author

Jason Sondhi
October 06, 2023

It was one year ago today that we first opened Shortverse to the public. It’s been an educational first year, with lots of progress, a few setbacks, and even some changes to our original vision. It’s also been a lot of fun building something of value and engaging with fans and filmmakers in new ways.

We have welcomed nearly 10,000 films onto the platform, but there is still a long way to go before achieving our vision of Shortverse encompassing “the universe of short film”. We’re going to keep at it and hope that you continue to join us on the journey. ✌

💡 Product Updates

We’re leading off with a big addition to Shortverse this week. We’re proud to introduce
Festivals! We compiled a database of fests at the very beginning of Shortverse so that filmmakers could add their laurels to their film pages. But now you can do much much more, including:

🎉 Browse Festivals: All 14,000+ short film festivals can now be searched, filtered, and discovered. You can filter by award-qualifying, genre (based on selected films), location, online eligibility, and anything else we want to add. We hope this can be an amazing resource to any filmmaker with a short who is looking to navigate the festival world.

🗳 Festival Pages: Every festival has a taste or perspective, so Shortverse is the first place where filmmakers can get all the info they need about a festival AND watch their official selections in one place. We also have a Submit Now button that will direct filmmakers to the fest’s website or submission platform of choice.

Happy exploring, and let us know what you think! If you help run a film fest, get in touch with us about joining our collection or gaining access to manage your festival’s page.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

Best of the Month: September 2023

A heartwarming fiction, a moving documentary, and a WTF animation make up Short of the Week's Best of the Month picks for September 2023

The Price of Cheap Rent by Amina Sutton + Maya Tanaka

In this satirical comedy, the search for affordable housing leads to a unique predicament for a young artist.

What I See When I Look by Lindsay Calleran

Explore the complicated dynamics of one family, as observed by a child.

S/W Alums at BFI London 2023

From short film to feature, we take a look at the Short of the Week filmmakers with debut features at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival.

In Harmony by Markus Øvre

In a world where the only form of communication is with music, a small man attempts to create a bond with someone special.

***

The week started early as we pushed our “Best of September” post out over the weekend. Our 3 picks neatly touch our primary categories, with a doc, a live-action narrative, and an animation combining to make a well-rounded program. Congrats to Paul Hairston, Nieto, and Sam Davis!

Not a lot of humor in those picks though, so do watch Amina Sutton and Maya Tanaka’s short next. A crowdpleaser out of TIFF, this mockumentary about the struggles of New York artist-types to secure affordable apartments should, by all rights, be mildly amusing at best. But, the writing simply doesn’t miss!

Then, director Lindsay Calleran describes her film, What I See When I Look as “a film about subjectivity and formative memory”. This is a tricky subject, and CĂ©line commends the filmmaker, but also the DP Jack Davis and Sound Designer Noah Chevan for immersing us in the lead’s perspective.

Rob then does a post to celebrate our S/W alums that have debut features at this year’s BFI London Film Fest. 8 filmmakers with 1st features will play the UK showcase, but if we were to highlight just one for this newsletter, let’s shout out 3-time alum Kibwe Tavares for the upcoming world premiere of The Kitchen. Claiming the closing night spot at the fest, the film sports Daniel Kaluuya as a co-director and will be released on Netflix later this year!

I then reviewed a British short animation that is, “impossible to not be charmed by”. From Markus Øvre, In Harmony does not push new ground in either story or technique, but imaginative character designs, paired with a catchy soundtrack that is incorporated into the story make for a simple and memorable watch.

Also this week, we dipped into the archives once again for YouTube, highlighting a memorable meta-thriller starring Marin Ireland that we featured back in 2016. If you missed it then, be sure to watch A Film by Vera Vaughn.

The Ten Best Short Films on Netflix | Short of the Week

We, like millions, watched the four new Wes Anderson short films that dropped on Netflix this week, and the occasion gave Rob an excuse to update this popular list that ranks our favorite short films on the streaming giant. Does “Henry Sugar” belong, and in which spot?!?

🎟 Coming soon that we’re excited about


Carne de Dios | Shortverse

In 17th-century Mexico, an ailing Christian priest is forced to endure native rituals that he had been persecuting.

Hoo boy
you’re not ready for this one. A standout at this year’s Annecy Film Festival, the latest film from Patricio Plaza, famous for his work on the phenomenally popular short El empleo (over 10M views), is a 20min masterpiece of adult (and I mean adult) animation. Macabre, violent, perverted
it runs the gamut. Coming online as part of awards season I would be DELIGHTED to see something this transgressive recognized. The film is due out Oct. 12.

🔍 Someone you should follow


Gobelins, l'Ă©cole de l'image | Shortverse

Founded over fifty years ago, GOBELINS Paris has become a leader among schools for the visual arts, and every Autumn they release their prior year’s graduation films online for audiences to discover.

It’s a wildly popular event for animation lovers and the time is now upon us—the first of the films, “Try Hard”, dropped this week and will be followed by a new film every Wednesday for the next 11 weeks. Follow their Shortverse profile to have each new film show up in your feed when it drops.

🎓 Alumni Updates

We’ll close out with some happy alum news from the world of feature film acquisitions


We profiled director Greg Kwedar in a long feature back in 2016 and his co-writer, Clint Bentley, is a directing alum of the site too. Congrats gents!

***

Minhal is a 3-time Short of the Week alum and was profiled as part of our “Short List” series in 2019. More recently, we had the honor of having her serve on the first Short Awards jury. Her debut feature, Hala, was a short-to-feature adaptation, and Minhal has been a vocal advocate of online releases, world-premiering her shorts online to great acclaim. We’re super-excited to see this pickup and look forward to catching the film on the big screen.

***

We’ve written about Michael Lukk Litwak on Short of the Week 3 times. His debut short, The Life and Death of Tommy Chaos and Stacey Danger was a hit in Hollywood and garnered the filmmaker, fresh out of NYU undergrad, a CAA agent. Unfortunately, trying to get studio work without a feature film under his belt proved challenging and Litwak ended up going the indie route with this film that premiered at SXSW this year. The bet paid off and we’re ecstatic for Michael and the team for this deal which promises a prominent theatrical roll-out.