long post incoming. yes i took a pen and paper to the microcinema. im normal guy
😊Block
"DAYDREAMERS" Yanely "Nelly" Castellanos (3 mintues)
- sisters on a treasure hunt imagine, fight, and make up
- cute and quaint, no dialog
"Sunflower's Friend" Carlos Lerma (2 minutes)- robot tries to take care of a sunflower but the sunflower doesnt want to grow
- smash cut to: actually robot is a guy leaving a voicemail about how he feels like he's the only one putting effort into the relationship
- animated, cute, made me feel sad about a robot just like friends at the table
"Rose" Finn Scully (5 minutes)- guy goes to grief counseling and keeps seeing his dead friend/lover seated where the therapist is
- just music, no words unless you read lips
- yeah this is a human experience
"A Way Out" Brian VandenBos (6 minutes)- sobriety, camping, walking into the woods in the dark when you relapse
- i love local no-budget filmmakers because i recognize their sets (this one was filmed partially at Swallow Cliff)
"Last Date" Andrea Zile Bish (10 minutes)- funny drama about a girl whose boyfriend proposes, then reminds her she still has to divorce her husband
- so she goes to serve him the "divorce for poor people" papers that say since they've been separated for 5 years what's hers is hers and what's his is his
- and he says i'm not signing this unless you let me take you out on one last date
- it's unclear to the audience and ultimately also to her and also possibly to him what his reason for this is
- the first capital-n Narrative of the night. a good one for sure
"Vanishing Point" Negin Mirfakhraee (4 minutes)- triptych view of someone looking out the window and occasionally getting up to answer the doorbell, which keeps getting lower in tone
- i gotta be honest guys. i did not get this one
"yolk" blair p (1 minute)- buncha clips of cutting into a runny yolk
- this rules. a short film is pretty much something you watch that isn't long
"Spirits Subjected" Lino Gil (3 minutes)- shadows playing in the reflected light from water in a cave maybe?
- i gotta be honest guys. i really did not get this one
"First Night Out in a Long Time" Crum (3 minutes)- scattered poetic visions of a party
- different people V/Oing their poems
- i liked this one a lot
"DANCE" Jesse Rothenberg (7 minutes)- a woman elaborately hides that she secretly dances to french music
- then her roommate/wife finds her and they dance together
- absolutely beautiful framing on a lot of these shots
"Open House" Mikaela McParlan (11 minutes)- a kidnapping?
- nice mirror shots
- oh my god
- she's showing the house
- oh my god
- oh my god
- not the garbage disposal!
- good for her
- i liked this one so much i found it online for you to watch
😵💫 Block
"Untitled Tony Hawk Pro Skater Film" Anais Orozco (7 minutes)
- never before has a film so frequently made me think, "is this text-to-speech voice reading a Bin Laden speech?", much less over THPS footage
- never before had i been right (it was "Letter to the American People" according to the credits)
- it's giving Subway Surfer Family Guy
"There Was Water Once" Ian Kelly (3 minutes)- distorted footage of waves
- cool to look at
"Into" Raine Yung (2 minutes)- lots of eaves and floodlights
- "very experimental" translation: i don't get it but cool
"thoughts on home" Ava Moniz (5 minutes)- poem about loss and remembrance V/Oed layered footage of the city
- good poem and good footage
"Yogurt Billionaire" Noel Sevilla (9 minutes)- yogurt recipe grindset guru
- very quotable
- "hey yogurt guy!"
- "hello? yogurt hotline"
- "tap in"
- "what's up yogurt millionaires"
- 10/10 you gotta watch this one too
"Neptune in Pisces" Madeline Blair (5 minutes)- layered voices, mac miller song
- layered footage
- very beautiful
- the comfort of Going To The Lake When You Feel Bad Or Have Problems
"Rejected Lines" Kevin B. Chatham (8 minutes)- retrospective on artist Van der Wallace's project to draw, inspired by a Peter Falk quote, "a good line"
- drew 278 lines over several years
- fascinating, wanna look this up later
- OH SHIT IT WAS FICTION??
"after that" Eislow Johnson (2 minutes)- sunset + zoom lens + distorted guitar
- what's not to like
"Mestizarte" Citalli Cardenas (6 minutes)- walking around a small art gallery full of people
- picture of a warm community
- daniel johnston backing track
"Boy Love Mixtape" Nick Swanton & Jack McCoy (3 minutes)- overlaid footage & audio
- an NPR ad for BetterHelp. boys dancing
- experimental in a meme-y way but not meme-y in a bad way
"Hard To Forget" Allie Morgan (15 minutes)- troubled mother moves her young daughter out of a bad living situation but can't help but replicate the same conditions and treatment as her parents
- interviews at a bar. meets new teacher and makes a bad impression.
- this one i think is also worth watching for yourself
"b l i n k" Cassius Battaglia and Dylan Maris (7 minutes)- it's like i said before: i love to see footage of my city
- even if that footage is chopped and screwed to make an impression that is yet unclear to me the viewer
i didn't stay for the third block cuz it was getting late. overall a very fun night. i hadn't been since the december shorts fest but i'd like to go again next month. if you're free on the west side on the last saturday of the month, do check out Sweet Void Cinema. their schedule is occasionally posted on instagram
