Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged short film

If You Like It Then You Should Be Able to Put A Ring On It

Adorable, DIY-style animation and quirky music start off this excellent and important film about marriage equality in Ireland. Cara Holmes and Ciara Kennedy cut and paste stories, images, protests, and facts into a clever, witty, and purposeful narrative. Voice-overs and interviews are illustrated and screened, intercut or overlaid upon footage from rallies, photo montages, and title cards (which have a very on-trend hand-drawn look). These touches make the film more accessible and adhere to the filmmakers’ established aesthetic.

Lizzy the Lezzy

To celebrate Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, the Sundance Channel has released five digitally animated Lizzy the Lezzy short films featuring the irreverent stand up comedy and musical humor of their title character. Who is this Lizzy the Lezzy – besides an Internet and television phenom who’s been featured on AfterEllen.com and Logo TV’s Alien Boot Camp?

Bye Bi Love

Bye Bi Love is a short film about a woman named Vera who receives a wedding invitation from her ex, and has a decision to make. Ticking this box is answering the most loaded question ever, and the reasons for this become clear as Vera’s story unfolds in a series of flashbacks depicting scenes with her current and former partners, all in the same apartment. Stylistically, it’s a rondo, which is really nice to see executed on film so sophisticatedly.

Fucking Different: Tel Aviv

Fucking Different: Tel Aviv is the third installation of this international collaboration of visual storytelling, starting first in Berlin and New York City in a sense similar to Paris Je T'aime_and _New York, I Love You.

What Makes Me White

In America we have seen a lot of victories in the battle against racism. An African American leader in the White House is a prominent sign of this progress. However, we still have far to go. The recent arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Gates has made many rush to judgment saying he is using the “race card” to dismiss any wrong action he may have taken during the incident. On the other hand, some are calling the actions of the police officer overtly racist. Accusing either side of using or dismissing race is an easy way out of a difficult discussion.

She Likes Girls 4

She Likes Girls 4 is a hilarious compilation of eight short films on various ways in which girls like girls. Topics center around gender, childhood innocence, homophobia, and presumptions. _Babysitting Andy _directed by Pat Mills is a humorous short about a nine-year-old brat who tortures her wheelchair-bound uncle and his partner into schooling her on the definition of fellatio.

Girl + Girl: Classic Lesbian Short Films

Reviewing a diverse film collection that includes a variety pieces can be a tricky task. This has certainly has been the case for reviewing this collection of lesbian short films. The DVD features a range of lesbian shorts produced between 1988 and 2003 in Europe, Canada, and the U.S.

No Country for Young Girls

No Country for Young Girls is a twenty-five minute question posed to India: "How can this country move forward while there is still profound gender discrimination against females?" Director Nupur Basu introduces twenty-seven-year-old Vyjanthi, a mother of a three-year-old daughter. When she becomes pregnant with another girl, her husband and in-laws pressure her to an abortion. She flees to her parents’ house to weigh her options. Should she leave her husband and raise her daughters on her own?

New York City Secrets / Secrets of Early U.S. History

I would have appreciated a one sheet of sorts to go along with New York City Secrets, as I wasn't really sure what it was about. It appears to be a short film with young people singing a rap song about different kinds of facts, secrets and things to do in New York City. There were some interesting graphics and information, but I am left wondering who the intended audience for this is. It was strange because I wasn't quite sure why they made it.

The Hollywood Machine

The Hollywood Machine is similar to an op-ed: it may make the writer feel better, but chances are it will never get noticed. And if her message is heard, it will be by those sympathetic or already in agreement with the meaning. This is the message the artist is sending.

Cantankerous Titles and Obscure Ephemera, Volume 1

This DVD of short documentaries by Joe Biel was probably the best thing that’s come in the mail for me this month. I mean that; I don’t even get a lot of bills! Maybe, as someone who enjoys interviewing people, I am a bit biased, but I really enjoy the subjects Biel presents, as well as the way personal commentary figures in, yet is not contrived.

The Journal of Short Film: Volume I: Fall 2005

The Journal of Short Film: Volume I is comprised of nine films that range from traditional linear narratives to non-narrative explorations to one that calls itself “improvised cinema.” The journal, which was founded to expand the forums available for talented, new filmmakers to showcase their work - much the way writers and poets have literary journals - has grown to include the release of five additional volumes and another in progress. Many of the films in the premier volume center on interpersonal relationships and intrapersonal struggles.

The Journal of Short Film: Volume V

Every film in this volume is so impressive, so full of the detail and thought that makes a film not just good or even great, but f*cking phenomenal _that it’s difficult to say anything more than _just buy a subscription already.
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