News

For short films, the Tribeca Film Festival is a must. Winning the award for Narrative Short or Best Documentary Short automatically qualifies a film for the Academy Awards. Their track record isn’t too bad either. Shawn Christensen’s Curfew had its New York premiere at the Festival and went on to win the Academy Award.

This year, Tribeca will show 60 short films in eight categories, from a variety of new and returning directors (including Christensen with Grandma’s Not A Toaster), and featuring performances from a number of Hollywood stars. Elijah Wood plays a standup comic who attempts a daring set in Setup,...

I've only just now caught wind of a one-time-only event that took place in the Port of Tallinn last Thursday, 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero, via Alison Nastasi at Movies.com: "An international collective of directors… contributed their shorts to the single 35mm film anthology that was screened for an audience one time — as part of Estonia's 2011 European Capital of Culture celebration — and then burned to the ground (along with the screen itself). Why, exactly? The project's website describes it as 'flying in the face of the cynicism of marketing, production, business operators, and the moral majority … dedicated to preserving freedom of thought in cinema.'" The roster of participating directors and artists is pretty impressive:

Brian Yuzna (USA), Michael Glawogger (Austria), Aku Louhimies (Finland), Ken Jacobs (USA), Gustav Deutsch (Austria), Tom Tykwer (Germany), Mark Boswell (USA), Malcolm Le Grice (UK), Aki Kaurismäki (Finland), Bruce McClure (UK), Mika Taanila...