One thing about being into cinema is that it will give you a liking for short films. I saw a second segment or forum of shorts at the VIFF entitled The peripheral core. This segment, the third Forum segment, consisted of eight films that are very similar, very different, but tell a lot.
-Resistance Meditation (dir. Sara Wylie): In this documentary, we see a woman (possibly director Wylie) sleeping in bed. As she sleeps, Wylie talks about sleeping and how the time on the clock we follow is ‘corporate time.’ As she lays in bad, we learn she has a disability and she calls her sleep here ‘crip time.’ It’s not just for her sleep, but to rebel against the demands of the capitalist world.
Simply put, this is a five-minute documentary where the filmmaker has something to say. Although I don’t completely agree with her opinion about ‘corporate time,’ I like how she makes her statement in a creative way. It makes sense to present filming of sleeping and her speaking her belief about time, disability and rebelling against it.
-A Very Straight Neck (Japan – dir. Neo Sora): A woman wakes up from her sleep and has terrible neck pain. The dream she has haunts her. Her dream was she was lying face-down on the sidewalk of a busy street and the world passes around her. Even crumbling out of its existence in her mind.
This is a picturesque short film which the focus is on unspoken images and the main character narrating in the background. The biggest quality is the visuals as it adds to the story and creates the mood of what she’s trying to say. Sometimes we can understand the pain she’s going through. Very well done.
-Not Enough for the Love Inside (Brazil – dirs. Marcelo Matos de Oliveira and Wallace Nogueira): Cassio and Otto are both gay couple in Bahia, Brazil and both became blind recently. Cassio is unemployed while Otto is able to participate with a theatre group. Through all that happens in the story and Cassio’s body language, one can’t help but notice the relationship appears doomed to end.
The biggest quality of the film is the body language. I don’t know if both became blind from the same incident or from separate incidents, but you can understand how sudden changes can affect a relationship. The body language in the film is as valuable to the story as the dialogue itself. It creates the negative vibe of a relationship that is starting to fall apart.
-The Sphinx (USA – dir. Jesse Pavdeen): Harold is a young adult locksmith by profession, but he has a problem. He was born without a nose and he needs to wear a prosthetic. His nose falls off during a date, but his date doesn’t mind. She encourages him to come to a party. Things get worse when the people at the party want him to show ‘his true self.’ He takes his nose off and they all laugh. He runs to his estranged mother’s house, but she has the door locked with seven locks. Meeting with his father exposes the secret.
When you have short films, you should expect a bizarre comedy or two. Harold is seen as The Sphinx as The Sphinx itself has its nose missing. I’ve seen stories of missing body parts or weird body parts before, but this comedy does a unique job in showing one young man’s flaw and how the world treats him. Even his mother who has cut herself off from everyone. It’s a bizarre story that’s humorous too.
-Confluence (Canada – dirs. Charlene Moore and Oliver Darrius Merrick King): This is a documentary made by Indigenous members of the Winnipeg Film Group for their 50th anniversary. As images of parts of Winnipeg are shown on screen, the Indigenous members of the Group talk about various topics like their land and colonizing, being an Indigenous person, filmmaking as an Indigenous person and even envisioning the future and pondering ideas of what to film next.
I’m from Winnipeg and I remember the Winnipeg Film Group and how it took a modest area in an office building back in the 1990’s. The Group has grown a lot. This documentary is important because in recent decades, the Indigenous peoples are getting more into the arts and holding their own. Film has a bright future in Winnipeg, but the Indigenous filmmakers show the most promise and most envisioning. It’s good to hear them speak their minds about the topics as we view images of Winnipeg.
-In My Hand (Norway – dirs. Marja Helander and Liselotte Wajstedt): The film begins with a re-enactment of Norwegian Sami activist Niillas Somby waking up in prison with his amputated arm bandaged. Niillas narrated how he spent 21 years in prison and was involved greatly with Sami activism. He also talks of the accidental battery explosion from 1981 that led to the loss of his arm. He also talks of the time he went to Canada cleverly disguised as a white man and with a fake passport. The film ends in the present with present-day Niillas and today’s Sami activists.
This is another film that showcases the racism felt by a nation’s first peoples. In this case, it’s the Sami peoples of the Nordic nations. Niillas Somby tells his story about what it was like to be a Sami activist and of some of the illegal things he did in his life. We hear Somby narrate as the moments are re-enacted in front of us. This is a valuable story in learning about their struggle and has a message worth hearing.
-Cocotte Coulombe, Filmmaker (Canada – dir. Charles-Francois Asselin): Charles-Francois has always known his unmarried deaf aunt Cocotte. He does remember her bringing a film camera to family events. It’s after her death that he discovered she had taken lots of family films. As he watches the family films of hers, he discovers this was they way she communicated her love to them.
This documentary is great at telling its story. Cocotte’s family films play in the background as Charles-Francois tells his story of Cocotte and his recent discovery of the films. It’s an intimate story of how a film maker himself learns how home videos were not just a hobby for Cocotte, but also the means for a deaf family member to show her love to them. It was nice to watch.
-We Were The Scenery (USA – dir. Christopher Radcliff): In 1978, Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che were Vietnamese refugees in a refugee camp in the Philippines. During that time in that same place, Francis Ford Coppola was filming Apocalypse Now and wanted to use the refugees as extras for the film. Le and Che rewatch Apocalypse Now and during the scenes, they point themselves out and mention of other people they knew personally as their appearances come on screen.
This is one documentary one would not expect. Most of us who saw Apocalypse Now probably never bothered to notice the extras were from a Vietnamese refugee camp. It was great to hear the story of how a couple who are married were those very extras and they saw it as just a way to make some extra money. It’s also a smart choice the director had them tell their story in Vietnamese. Although they are now American citizens, telling their story in Vietnamese only adds to this documentary.
And that was my experience with the short films from Forum 3: The peripheral core. Interesting how with this forum, five of the eight films were documentaries. Although I prefer watching live-action, I still found the documentaries intriguing to watch. Whatever the documentaries had to say, they said it well in their own way. For the live-action, they were unique to watch as well.
Jon The Blogcentric 