LOBSTER
Is there a heaven for crustaceans? Could the cuisine on your stove top have attained a higher spiritual station? Relax, sit back and discover what one young couple learns.
An age-old controversy is resolved after relational tensions come to a boil over whether the main course in this kitchen comedy does or does not have a soul.
Local writer/director/producer and former kid television prodigy Jocelyn Jansons turns in this tight cinematic joke to confound your culinary courage and stoke your karmic concerns.
DELIA
Some movies are about what happens. Some are about what doesn’t happen. “Delia” takes place in the space between. Don Gray unpacks the emotional baggage of this dysfunctional duo with a minimalist eye for action and a maxed-out soundtrack that accompanies this pair on a weird, existential tango.
Watching the picture I found myself thinking, this is a filmmaker that trust’s his audience and is willing to collaborate with them as much as he does with the cast and crew.
“Less telling and more showing allows the audience to bring their own understanding of the world to the story,” says Gray.
ENERGY TAP OUT
“Energy Tap Out” tickles us with sympathetic clown Rex Sharpe an environ-mentally challenged goofball enforcing energy conservation with superhero-type tactics on ordinary, unsuspecting citizens. Once I started laughing I never stopped.
Originally created for the 48 Hour Go Green Film Festival last February and winner of Best Comic Short at 2011 Filmmaker’s Showcase, director Adrien W. Colon admits, “We had way too much fun making it. I nearly had to excuse myself from the set multiple times because I couldn’t hold my laugh while the cameras were rolling.”
Family film fare, all age groups will get it on different levels. Wears its filmmaking on its sleeve. $10,000 question, what is Rex Sharpe’s next move?
THE STORY OF AN ENGINE
In 90 seconds or less, Brad Wolfley has crafted a brilliant piece of creepy animation from a few line drawings, voice-over narration, some precise camerawork and editing. Exceptional in its simplicity and economy, it has about as much to do with an engine as somebody’s dead relative.
Says Brad, “Its intent is to reveal a piece of myself; in this case, my own interest in memory, machines and our collective experience vis-à-vis the sequencing of image and sound in relation to story.”
Made in twenty-three hours. A short-listed Finalist for You Tube Play and the Guggenheim Museum’s Biennial of Creative Video, 2010. Not bad for a days work.
WAKING UP CRANE
What compels humans to huddle indoors in the dark to see a movie about wild birds taking flight at sunrise? Sound ridiculous? You won’t think so while you are watching this sumptuously photographed documentary about migratory birds and their habitat on the Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge in Southern New Mexico. For one thing, it would have taken us days of expert fieldwork, prolonged chilly hours in the February dawn, and incalculable quantities of patience to witness all the beauty, drama and amusement packed in Joanne Schmidt’s 3-minute gem.
Films like this are potent doses of medicine that enter through the senses and work like an antidote to the discord and confusion of life in our hyperactive world. Winner “Best Picture” at the 2011 Santa Fe 3-Minute Film Festival. View the trailer at http://vimeo.com/30108218.
SACRED POISON
Director of graduates at NYU’s Arther L. Carter’s Journalism Institute, Yvonne Latty and her students travel to underserved communities to bring fascinating and important subjects to the public eye on their website http://www.pavementpieces.com.
This title shows the devastating toll past uranium mining has had on the Navajo people and discusses the potential risks posed by a resurgence of uranium mining. It lays out the complex and conflicting economic, political, environmental and spiritual issues involved.
This documentary in no way portrays the Navajo as victims of outside forces, but rather agents of change within their community and beyond. Visit www.sacredpoison.com for more info.
THE INCREDIBLE VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN HOOK
Think you’ve seen it before? Think again. With a gifted cast, a high-polish and exceptional comic timing, this original scenario messes with your head like the anti-psychosis drugs forced on the unfortunate Captain over the course of his harrowing passage.
Imaginative camera work, live action and digital composite animation, plus a superb soundtrack cross swords to compress time and convey this fast moving, tongue-in-cheek, pocket-sized epic.
I wanted to work with a story that has been told but from a different angle,” explains director Josh Klein. “I always disliked Peter Pan. As I grow older I identify more and more with Captain Hook who’s just trying to do his job with this little punk and his buddies constantly hassling him.” This short was made in order to facilitate funding a feature length version, so bring your checkbook.
The Santa Fe Film Festival and Movie Magic present: Spotlight on New Mexico Filmmakers Shorts Program (97 min.) followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Saturday, October 22 at 12:45p.m. Center for the Contemporary Arts 1050 Old Pecos Trail. (505) 982-1338. Tickets at http://www.ticketssantafe.org, (505) 988-1234, or at the door.
