Future Shorts presents: Adventures in Short Film Vol 1
Distributed by
Future Shorts
Cert:
Cat.no: FSD100
Running time: 120 minutes
Year: 2008
Pressing: 2008
Region(s): 2, PAL
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
Languages: mainly English, also Spanish, French, Russian, Swedish
Subtitles: English (on foreign language shorts)
Macrovision: Yes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Price: £14.99
Extras:
None
Vote and comment on this DVD:
Directors:
various, including Jamie Thraves, Nacho Vigalondo, Kim Chapiron, John Harden, Slava Ross
Cast:
various, including Vincent Cassel, Martin Freeman, Bat for Lashes
Very much an arthouse kind of Now That’s What I Call Short Films, this is the first proper DVD release of Future Shorts ambitious project to make their passion accessible.
Short and sweet, sixteen small but perfectly formed films here show the
amazing range of talents currently working at the cutting edge. Indeed, some
are so much on the edge that they embrace taboos – like John Harden’s monochrome
La Vie d’un Chien (2005), in which a scientist enables man-on-dog love
through synthesising a drug that allows humans to become animals, before changing back.
Weirdly, darkly comic, it satirises society’s hang-ups and the knee-jerk
reaction of those wishing to control anything other than the norm – all in
just 13 minutes.
La Vie d’un Chien won best narrative short at the LA Film Festival, and award-winning
shorts pepper this selection. Slava Ross’ Meat (2004) and Jonas Odell’s
Never Like The First Time (2005) have been deservedly showered with
international awards – and both deal with sex, but in very different ways. Meat
has a Russian single mother selling sex to make ends meet – to the anguish of her
young son. While First Time uses four, real, first-hand interviews about "the
first time", then dramatises their recollections with four very different styles
of animation. It sure ain’t Creature Comforts, but it is endearing and
honest – especially the final story.
The oldest by some distance, but still one of the freshest, most enjoyable films
here is I Just Want To Kiss You (1989). Starring a young, wiry pre-fame
Martin Freeman, it takes its inspiration from all those hip French New Wave
films with Belmondo, and is yet another beautifully-lit, black & white study.
Another fine bit of menacing acting comes from Vincent ‘La Haine’ Cassel in
La Barbichette (2002). And you simply have to see the surreal, Oscar-nominated
7:35 In The Morning (2003) from Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo, with
its café setting and chorus of singing, dancing breakfasters. Jojo in the
Stars, (2003) by Marc Craste has won a BAFTA and Cartoon d’Or, and is
peopled by a mix of eerie, malevolent and innocent robot-like figures. Can
love triumph against adversity?
Funniest – and shortest – shorts are the deadpan Neighbor (2003) and the
simply animated Procrastination (2007), both from the US, and both just
two minutes long. Perfect.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
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