Great films don’t always have to take two-and-a-half hours. Sometimes, you can get an amazing, clever, beautiful short film all wrapped up in less than two-and-a-half minutes.
Sometimes, even less.
“Our shortest one this year is 39 seconds!” said Sharlene Millang, the director of the Edmonton Short Film Festival, happening tonight.
“It was funny. When the filmmaker first submitted it, it was one minute and 29 seconds. We said, ‘Umm … you know that over half of your film is your title and your credits?’” she laughed, referring to a cartoon series called ‘Johny5: Did You Smoke Pot?’ created by Jonathan Holeton. “It’s like an animated joke but it works!”
Short films can be of any genre and any style. There are horrors and comedies, experimental films, animated works and documentaries. It’s really just like the wide, wide world of feature length film, only much, much shorter. In this fest, there is a 15-minute maximum for any one submission. No minimum.
Millang loves them so much that she doesn’t just produce the festival. She also makes shorts herself through her company Groove Soldier Productions. She first toured her work through the festival circuit and came to discover something important.
“What we noticed was a sad lack of local festival content in Alberta. Lots and lots of international festivals but not so much just for Albertans. There are a lot of us who are only making short films.”
The first short film festival in Edmonton was two years ago and was a resounding success. Now firmly established as a presence on the city’s cultural calendar, Millang received more than 550 minutes’ worth of submissions. Screening the best of the best means that there will be approximately 155 minutes of films to view tonight.
She said that because of the overwhelmingly positive response, there’s a strong case for expanding the fest to two days in the future, maybe even next year.
There are more than 20 films that will be screened tonight, including works by Richard Lukacs, Eva Colmers, Christina Ienna, Myles Belland Jason Jeffery and Justin Kueber. Kueber describes The Last Slice as a fun music video.
“We can't wait for the audience to see it. It's a man's love story to his last slice of pizza so hopefully it gets a few chuckles.”
Also on the handbill is a 15-minute episode of Invincible from its first season. The Open Sky Pictures production by Fred Kroetsch and St. Albert-raised Kurt Spenrath is broadcast on Telus Optik TV.
The biographical series looks at the challenges faced by disabled Canadians, with Daniel Ennett, a quadruple amputee, at front and centre as he explores art, work and sports in the disabled community.
Invincible is an unmitigated success as Kroetsch and Spenrath are currently off to start filming the third season. Together, they won the Hot Docs 2015 Short Film Competition and were nominated for five AMPIA awards including best short documentary and best documentary series. They also won the first BravoFactual award in 2013.
“We’ve been in lots of short film festivals before but not this one,” Kroetsch said, thankful for the openness of the selection criteria.
“The regulation for the Edmonton Short Film Festival is that (the entry) could be an episode of a web series or a TV series. It just had to be short.”
The episode clocks in at the maximum allotted time.
In addition to the juried films being screened, there will also be a pre-roll of animated films supplied by the National Film Board. That selection includes the Oscar-nominated Me and My Moulton. That starts at 6:05 p.m.
Tickets at the door are $20.00 and include complimentary popcorn and hors d’oeuvres. There will also be live music and a cash bar. Filmmakers will be in attendance.
Doors open at 6 p.m. and the juried films start at 7 p.m.
The fest is also hosting a special Filmmaking Master Class by Bryan Michael Stoller, award-winning producer/director/writer of such films as First Dog and author of the Screenwriting for Dummies. He made his name creating some hilarious pop culture inspired spoof shorts for Super Channel and Dick Clark’s Bloopers shows back in the 1980s.
That will be held at the El Cortez restaurant today from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. A limited number of tickets are available to the general public.
