Fern

If you want a short black comedy about bereavement, you’ve come to the righ(ish) place.  Fern is a short movie about a recently widowed women who is not called Fern.  The title of the short is the name of the type of house plant our bereaved protagonist befriends in her hour of need.  This tatty, almost dead plant allows her to nurture something that she can, at least, help return to life.  If that sounds a little cosy, fear not.  The fern in question is very much the antagonist of the piece – but you will have to watch to find out more.

Written and directed by Johnny Kelly and commissioned by the UK TV Channel 4, Fern stars Monica Dolan.  Dolan is a very familiar face to British TV and theatre audiences, having starred in numerous shows and productions, including Talking Heads, Mr Bated vs The Post Office, Sherwood and Death in Paradise.

Those outside the UK may recognise her from two episodes of Black Mirror (series 5’s Smithereens, and series 6’s Loch Henry.  Dolan’s film credits include Kick-Ass 2, The Dig and This Time Next Year.

Fern was produced by Nexus Films.  Watch it below.

The Mark on the Wall

“Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall.”  So starts Virginia Woolf’s first ever published short story.  This very short adaptation focuses on the narrator, fixated by the mark on the wall that she has just noticed and imagining many, many reasons for its presence in her room.  As you will see, the film is faithful to the short story and has the same, somewhat surreal, ending.  However, I don't think that this was what Virginia Woolf was really afraid of... (sorry, couldn't resist that).

Written and directed by Anderson Wright, The Mark on the Wall was produced by Vesta Tuckute for Violeta Films.

There Will Be Blood - Through Numbers

You may never see the art of film direction in quite the same way after you watch this. I knew there was a lot more to it than simply pointing a camera in a certain direction and shouting action but what this video by Ali Shirazi reveals is somewhere in the category of mind blower.

Shirazi takes There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and shows how film techniques, some derived directly from art through the centuries, are used to amazing effect. Included are the golden ratio, one point perspective and tracking shots. It just goes to show how science (specifically here, mathematics) and art are intrinsically entwined.

Micro Empire

Clemens Wirth likes small things. So someone passed him a microscope and a drop of water and he got on with it. What we get is a fascinating look in to the micro world – and it’s not something that you get to see every day (or would probably care to see if you are even remotely squeamish!).

Yet however much you may want to look away it is really difficult to do so because you might miss something with that extra wow factor.

There is plenty of wow in Wirth’s collaboration with Radium Audio. In his own words: “The real challenge was definitely the small depth of field in microscopy. It’s really fascinating how detailed this tiny world is, and unbelievable how much is going on in only one little water drop.”

Monster Date

Those crazy kids over at the Vancouver Film School are the modern day equivalents of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.  The big difference, though, is that instead of putting on a show, these guys create a very funny and hugely enjoyable video for Halloween.  This has absolutely nothing to do with their degree work, it was just something that they felt like doing.  And what an awesome job they make of it!

The concept is quite simple and straightforward (which is why perhaps it makes this such blissful viewing).  Harkening back to the video dating fad of the 1980s this piece features a series of lonely hearted monsters in search of the special one.  Most varieties of monsters are represented, from vampires to zombies and there is even an appearance by a genie.  There are quite a number of great one liners, but for me, the genie has just about the best line - " I'm not looking for a girl who's just interested in rubbing my lamp".

The monsters here are fairly reminiscent - in terms of makeup and character - to the types we used to see in Buffy - and the whole thing is produced with wit and panache.  If this is what the students at the VFS make in their spare time, one can only wonder what amazing films they come up with for their degree projects.

Is this a tribute or a pastiche?  Who can really tell and to be frank, who cares?  It is great stuff, especially coming up to Halloween.  The fun doesn't stop there either.  The makers are inviting responses over at their YouTube channel. If you have the desire, you can create your own response (you have to be in full fancy dress) and submit it there.

Taidama - What Happened when Japanese Americans were Freed from Internment?

There had been a number of laws in the USA which had prevented American Asians from being able, among other things, to own land, vote or even testify against white people in court.  When it came to the Second World War, one might think common sense would dictate an assumption that people of Japanese origin had decided to make their homes in the US for something other than subversion: there was no hiatus when it came to discriminatory law-making, however.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.  It paved the way for 120,000 people of Japanese origin, two thirds of them American citizens, to be interned for the duration of the war.  This happened despite the Munson Report of 1940, commissioned by the President, which stated that “There will be no armed uprising of Japanese” in the USA.  So why did this happen?

Perhaps this extract from an extraordinary editorial in the Los Angeles Times might go some way to explain it.  I will let you join the dots – it is hardly a challenge and may ring a few more recent rhetorical bells than comfort might allow. “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched... So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere...notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American... Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion...that such treatment...should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race.”

TADAIMA - Japanese American WWII short film from Robin Takao D'Oench on Vimeo.

So we come to Taidama – which literally translates as “I'm home”.  It takes place after the war.  A Japanese American family has been released from an internment camp and its members make their way back to their Californian farm.  They do not find it as they left it.  (Full film here).

Taidama is a film of few words.  Yet its exposition of events is profound and it tells its story without sentimentality or Walton's Mountain style romanticisation. There is some gorgeous golden hour photography by Mingjue Hu, juxtaposing the natural beauty of the Californian countryside with the dread in the heart of the returnees, giving the cast a certain luminosity This is particularly true of Mackenyu Maeda who plays the son and who also serves as a symbol of the future of Japanese American citizenry.  We’ll be seeing a lot more of Mackenyu in 2018’s Pacific Rim: Uprising but I suspect that Taidama has revealed much more of his acting talents than the monster movie will (perhaps I’m too much of a snob to comment honestly there).

His character’s love of America in Taidama is represented through his baseball obsession and it is left to the viewer to decide whether or not he will ever play again.  His retrieval of the long-buried baseball cards he hid before the family were removed from their home might suggest that, but the beautifully shot closing sequence is a little more ambivalent (although we can perhaps dare to be optimistic).

This may not necessarily provide perfect closure for the audience but it surely reflects the way that many of the 120,000 must have felt on their release.  Re-integration must have been tentative, with the caution that accompanies disappointment and betrayal an everyday feeling for many years afterwards.

Although Mackenyu is the beating heart of the film he receives excellent support from Toshi Toda (who you may remember for his portrayal of Colonel Adachi in Letters from Iwo Jima), Vivian Umino who is mostly known as a producer and director, with work including Captured (2002) and newcomer Jordyn Kanaya.

Haidama was written and directed by Robin Takao D'Oench whose grandfather was one of the 120,000 Japanese Americans interned during the war.  He dedicates it to all of them.  Try and catch it on Vimeo now before it goes to OnDemand (ie you have to pay to watch it) in March.

Ruin

Ruin is something quite special.  If you like science fiction and you love (as I do!) animation then this short by OddBall Animation will be something that you will watch more than once.  It is set in the future - from the look of the ruined city a good few centuries. There has obviously been something of an apocalyptic event and this is well and truly post.

Yet life still stirs. A single human is in search of something that may unlock the cause of the devastation.  However, he is not alone... Ruin was not commercially developed by OddBall Animation. It is a project that they developed internally as a way to post their experiments and works-in-progress.  Wow.

Hollywood’s First Harrison Ford

Long before Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford was starring in movies such as Her Gilded Cage (1919) and Lovers in Quarantine (1925).  Yet it wasn’t the Harrison Ford we know and love – it was someone else entirely.  Hollywood’s first Harrison Ford had a career which spanned 1915 – 1932. Above you can see him with Marguerite Clark in the 1920 movie Easy to Get.

This particular Harrison Ford was born in 1884 in Kansas City, Missouri.  Like everyone else in this day and age he trained for the stage and made his Broadway debut at the age of twenty in a play called Ranson’s Folly by Richard Harding Davis.

He appeared in a number of productions and made his name as a handsome leading man, which led eventually to movie work.

A move to Hollywood was inevitable and he left the east coast in 1915 to pursue his dream of making movies.  He was to enjoy a long and varied career, starring opposite a number of Hollywood's leading ladies of the time.

Image Credit Boston Public Library

Above he poses for a picture with the actress Norma Talmadge, one of the most elegant and glamorous film stars of the roaring twenties.  Yet screen popularity was not to last for Harrison Ford – his first talkie in 1932, Love in High Gear, was also his last.  Like so many others actors he failed to make the transition from silent movies.

Yet he was able to put his screen acting career aside, moving on from earlier triumphs such as The Song and Dance Man, made in 1926 (he is the young man in the center of the picture) and returned to acting in the theatre.. Ford also directed productions at the Little Theater of the Verdugos in Glendale, California and played an active role in the United Service Organizations (the nonprofit organization that provides programs, services and live entertainment to United States troops and their families) during the Second World War.

Ford died in 1957 after having been struck by a car while out for a walk.  Although not as famous as Hollywood’s second Harrison Ford, the first will also be always remembered with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6665 Hollywood Blvd.

Teddy Bears are for Lovers

Collin is something of a serial Casanova and, just when his girlfriends’ thoughts turn to love he heads off the issue with a gift – a teddy bear.  This has gone on for some time but one evening when Collin is in bed, the teddy bears come back to exact their revenge on him.  Directed by Almog Avidan Antonir, this short film features some of the most murderously cute teddy bears you will see this week.

Craco - The Abandoned Town

Back in 1963 massive landslides made the inhabitants of the hilltop town of Craco in Italy shrug their shoulders one last time and move elsewhere.  As no one wished to (or could…) move in the place was left to nature.  Today although the local authorities have made attempts to rehabilitate the town as a tourist attraction it remains eerily abandoned.  If a town could have a beautiful corpse this is it, as amply demonstrated by Walter Molfese’s amazing film.

The Manhattan Project – Time Lapse

Hold on to your hats for a whistle stop tour of Manhattan.  Cameron Michael lugged 120-130 pounds of gear around all of Manhattan in order to bring you this astonishing footage.  Not all of it, strictly speaking, was legally done but I am sure you will turn a blind eye once you have sat through this amazing piece of work!

What I particularly like about this stop motion piece is the camera work, strictly speaking the way that the camera pans while the stop motion is actually happening.  This is a fairly new technique and has not been attempted successfully (let alone brilliantly!) by many people.  Here it is seamless. Just awesome work!

Edifice

Writer and director Rogerio Silva created Edifice after watching dancers Carmine De Amicis and Harriet Waghorn rehearse.  He was, to put it in his own words: “taken with the honesty of the movement and how Carmine and Harriet supported each other equally throughout. There were no gender roles and I liked that they could reverse their roles and everything would still work”.   The result is a mesmerising dance short.

Werner the Vampyre

If you are familiar with Ann Rice’s novels then you are probably aware that being a vampire does come with issues all its own. For many vampires, being so long lived (if that is the correct way to describe the centuries they may exist) has its burdens and one is that they often fail to move with the times and discover that the era in which they now exist is meaningless to them.  Some vampires find this an almost impossible hurdle to overcome.

So it is with Werner (played wonderfully by Tom Micklem) in this very funny short comedy from Chris Boyle, a director based in London.  Werner (who has more than a little of the Lestat about him) has lived through many ages of man and the twenty first century is something he cannot quite deal with.  However, when he does discover a way to thrive in our electronic era he sets about it with typical vampiric gusto.  Chris Boyle obviously has an in depth knowledge if not a love for the genre he is gently satirising here as Werner the Vampyre is full of undead tropes, (devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations). Werner the Vampyre not so quietly lampoons a category of film fiction here that has, at any rate, been disappearing up its own, ahem, jugular, for a number of years.

Very Little Stars

Jaw, meet floor. This is one of the most astonishingly good timelapse films you will see for a long time.  Created by Timelapse Inc, the short was photographed and edited by Ben Wiggins with the accompanying music being The Alley by DeVotchKa. Very Little Stars showcases the newest development in timelapse the adopted name for which at the moment is hyperlapse.

What is a hyperlapse? You may well ask.  Essentially it involves moving the camera while still shooting at a speed normally associated with timelapse.  It’s a new technique and one that has been evolving recently – what Wiggins does here is move it on to the next level by making these movements huge.  Sit back, go full screen and if your machine will take it, switch to HD. Remember to hold your chin in your hand to avoid the jaw/floor moment.

HyperNormalisation: A new film by Adam Curtis available on BBC iPlayer

Is the world that we know it changed, quietly, forever – and are we complicit in that change simply because of our inactivity? This question and many others is raised by the new film by Adam Curtis, available on BBC iPlayer.  It is causing something of a stir on social networks and for good reason as it asks a number of long overdue questions.

First and foremost is this: do we live in a world where the truth is no longer valued – to the extent that the term post-truth has been coined?

There is another word in the mix too, one which I have not come across before – and that is HyperNormalisation (excuse the capitals, not quite sure what to do with them!).  The teaser above is just that – it is the process of how we got to where we are now – the point at which the truth, at least politically, is no longer a prerequisite in terms of what we demand from our politicians.

The simplified and frankly fake version of the world that many of us now see is where the term hypernormalisation comes in and this riveting film has a cast of characters from over forty years.  Has the chaos of those years culminated in a kind of paralysis where those who are supposed to lead us find that they do not know what to do?

Take a look at this film – you can then judge for yourself how this perceived retreat from the reality of the world has taken on an authenticity all of its own.

Pacifica

This amazing footage was shot by film maker Marlon Torres using new AF100 camera.  I can’t quite believe that what we see here is really just him testing out his new toy! So, sit back, relax and see the ocean in all its beauty.

The music, so it doesn’t annoy you if you cannot remember, is Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent Van Gogh: Painted with Words

This drama-documentary starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role as Van Gogh is an irresistible treat if you are a fan of the actor, the painter or both. The film, written and directed by Andrew Hutton, won a Rockie for Best Arts Documentary at the Banff World Media Festival in 2011, receiving critical acclaim for its fascinating insight into the life of the artist and its unique approach to storytelling.

Desert Yogi

You don’t see this in the desert every day – but then most of us don’t get to visit a desert on a regular basis. Dylan Werner, a world leader in yoga strength training and body weight movement is captured in the desert by director Russell Brownley. It combines a mixture of beautiful cinematography with the sight of how one man finds clarity, peace, presence and meditation.

Watch the Potter’s Wheel from the Perspective of the Vase

If you have ever seen Ghost (the 1990 movie starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore) then you will be aware of how the potter’s wheel can be manipulated on film to become something quite, well, suggestive.  Not to anthropomorphize ceramics, of course, but one can only wonder how the poor vase felt. 

This short featuring Eric Landon of Tortus in Copenhagen goes some way to address that grave injustice. It follows the process of ceramic making from the perspective of the vase rather than the person, the creation rather than the creator (which sounds like something of a lesson for life).  Patrick and Demi may have been cute (and Eric is rather dashing too) but the real beauty can be found in the process of creation, dizzying though it may be at times. I would almost guarantee that you won’t be able to stop watching this until the process is complete. And then you might have to hold on to something for a while.

Sana'a: The Melody of our Alienation

Sana’a the capital of Yemen has always been on my bucket list: in fact I have had a fascination for the whole country since I discovered its amazing architecture.  Yet Yemen is a country in flux, its future uncertain.  This elegeic  piece by Abdurahman Hussain send us a reminder that no matter how strange the city feels, people are not strangers in their own city. This is their city. This is where they belong. This is where they will make a difference as agents of peace.