PART 1: WHAT ARE YOU (2014)

What Are You is an interesting experimental short film by Kira Bursky mixing live action with stop frame animation. Inspired by Halloween it metaphorical look at the effects of warped body image and media on the stability of a teenage girl. The visuals are strong and the clever use of sound really adds to the mood and tone of the piece.


Link to PART 1: WHAT ARE YOU

BRUNO (2012)

BRUNO is a short Spanish film by Alvaro San Hose. It is dialogue free and makes heavy use of strong visuals and a really inventive and atmospheric sound-track to tell the story. It seems to blur the past and the present and perceptions of memories that shape us. In particular the cinematography, strong mise-en-scene and fantastic grading are worth a mention.


Link to BRUNO

UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1928)

Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a highly influential surrealist experimental 1928 short by the Spanish director Luis Bunel. It was a collaboration with the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and it has no conventional plot jumping around in narrative in a dreamlike and often nightmarelike manner. Some of the visuals are striking and highly memorable, look out for the eye and moon graphic match cut sequence in particular.

THE PHONE CALL (2014)

The Phone Call by won the Oscar for best live action short film in 2015. Written and directed by Suffolk born and bred Matt Kirkby the film centres around a shy woman (Heather) who works in a crisis helpline call centre and a phone call that changes her life forever. Delicately touching and heartbreaking and with a very basic premise it keeps the audience dangling from the beginning to the end. It is a great example of the style fitting the substance and less sometimes being more.

BLOOD PULLS A GUN (2014)

Blood Pulls A Gun is a 2014 Australian short film by Ben Briand. It is a tale of a bored girl dreaming of escape in a dead end small town between "half way between here and there". It examines the effect her meddling has on characters staying in the motel she works at. It is a hugely atmospheric piece laden with impending danger and threat by it's use of time, cinematography, pace, mise-en-scene and especially excellent performances.


Link to Blood Pulls A Gun.

2:20 (2011)

2:20 is a short film by Jason Wingard that won the Virgin Media Shorts, short film festival in 2011. In order to be eligible for this competition the films have to be only 2 minutes 20 seconds long and the film cleverly uses this in the narrative. The finished film is an interesting mix of horror and sci-fi and shows what is capable in just over 2 minutes with two main actors, one street, a pair of glasses and some special effects.

BLOOD & CHIPS (2006)

Blood and Chips was made by Ryan Phillips in 2006 and runs at only 3 minutes. This charming, and very brief, short is set in that most English of locations – the Fish and Chip shop – as the country swelters under a heatwave. The film focuses on a surly bigot bemoaning the state of the country while waiting for his takeaway, but his presumptions may well be his undoing. Blood and Chips effortlessly captures the simmering menace of violence that bigotry foments, as well as the sense of kinship and community that exists between people for good or ill. Witty, realistic and uplifting, the film is a wonderful celebration of multicultural Britain that gets its message across without being in the least bit preachy.