Film

Chinese woman sitting by a wall looking pensive.
Fig 1. Scene from Raise the Red Lantern. Source.

Log Entries

10.08.2025 // Back to the Basics with Short Film

Cape Town, South Africa ⬔

During my recent trip to New York City, a friend invited me to the IFC Center to watch this year's Sundance Shorts Tour. This screening is the latest in a series of unexpected encounters with short film that have popped up throughout my travels in the past year. Wherever I go, it seems like there is some sort of short film festival or screening going on. I have also begun to cross paths with aspiring and emerging directors, and it has been fascinating to gain some insight on the current challenges and opportunities within the discipline. In a way, it is all very fitting. When I first began to wade into the world of film nearly ten years ago, my point of entry was a short film: Chris Marker's La jetée, which has haunted me ever since.

The translucent image of a woman in a black dress, from the chest up, overlays a black and white scene with a boat in a lake.
Fig 1. Scene from La jetée. Source

I want to reflect on this yearlong impromptu journey into short film by featuring some of my personal highlights and what has made these films so memorable.

Bright Lights (2019) by Charby Ibrahim

A short documentary film on gambling and addiction, animated in the bright flashing lights of slot machines, that communicates the despairing ease with which compulsion takes over the human brain. The white outlined figures on the black background are eery; the animation manages to convey the way in which addiction can hollow out a life. It is a film I find myself coming back to, and that I think about a lot in relation to the rise of design elements in games and social media that draw inspiration from casinos.

Bogotá Story (2023) by Esteban Pedraza

I stumbled upon this short fiction film by chance and it turned out to be one of the most meaningful encounters I had with an artwork in 2024. It brings the Bogotá of the 90s back to life with an attention to detail that is astounding. It almost felt like the visual quality of the film mirrored that of my own childhood memories: from the color palette of greens, brick oranges, and blues to a dark shadowy quality of a city often overcast. Not only am I not used to seeing my hometown depicted on film, but seeing it reconstructed with so much care was touching. This care contrasts in a powerful way with the violence that simmers just below the surface throughout most of the film, foreshadowing tragedy.

Black and white image of a young man standing on the grassy foreground with the sea and cliffs behind him. He holds a piece of rope from which dangles an orb.
Fig 2. Scene from De Blinden. Source

De Blinden (2023) by Michiel Robberecht (International Short Film Festival of Cyprus)

When I saw this odd fictional short in the Rialto in Limassol, I did not know what to make of it. A town full of blind inhabitants, a temporal setting that could be the past or some sort of future, a mysterious threat that may or may not exist. It was very different from all the other films screened that day at the festival. Shot in black and white, there is a compelling play of shadow and light that gives the film a mythical feeling. Ultimately, De Blinden made me think of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and David Bowie's last album, ★ (Blackstar), which are not uninteresting evocations.

We Were The Scenery (2025) by Christopher Radcliff (Sundance Shorts Tour at the IFC Center)

I must make a somewhat embarrassing confession now: I have never watched Apocalypse Now. It is one of those classics that I have not gotten around to watching, but that I have been wanting to. I mention it now because We Were The Scenery is a mini documentary of the Vietnamese refugees that were casted as extras in the film. Apparently, Coppola's film crew arrived at a refugee camp in the Philippines and swept everyone up to be part of the film. We Were The Scenery is the testimony of one couple, Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che, and their difficult relationship with Apocalypse Now and the war-torn past that haunts them. Even now, I remember the feeling of sitting in the theater and realizing how messed up it was to have victims of war recreate the very same war that they were running away from. It was a strong commentary on filmmaking through the lens of another filmmaker. In a way, I am glad I got to see Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che's version of the story first, of what it truly meant to survive the Vietnam War.

Hurikán (2024) by Jan Saska (Sundance Shorts Tour at the IFC Center)

I will close out my list with another animated short, Hurikán. Having lived through a few hurricanes, I believe this film is aptly named. The pacing of the animation is great in the way it alternates between moments of suspense and anticipation with high energy impact scenes that tear through Prague. The effect was also perhaps heightened by the fact that it followed right after We Were The Scenery and I was still a bit teary eyed when the pig headed protagonist burst into the scene. I really enjoyed how the film played with the slapstick conventions of cartoon, while still managing to transcend those conventions.

Other Short Films Watched

- Andrea

21.02.2025 // Constellations

Villecien, France ⬔

When the world appears to be pregnant with possibility, I take it as an invitation to embark upon a journey. Or, when I embark on a new journey, the world often appears to suddenly be pregnant with possibility, such as it appears to me now, after some recent day trips to Paris. But even after returning to the rolling muddy hills of the Yonne, I continue to be restless, yearning to visit and revisit as I have just done at the Palais-Royal, the courtyard of the Louvre, the narrow roads from Opera to Châtelet and the Centre Pompidou.

Wandering up and down the streets of a beloved city brings me a quiet but intense joy, akin to the feelings evoked by my favorite books, films, images, music. And so, I decided to embark on another journey, but this time through my memory, the internet, and some ink.

It has resulted in maps and constellations of those special works of art that move me and renew my gaze. Perhaps these are the transcendental feelings that others find in religion, ritual, patriotism, and/or mind-altering substances. I guess this could be a creative ritual of sorts, but I find the language around ritual and transcendence to have become so tired lately.

So, here is a brief inventory of my eclectic mental re-collections of sights, sounds, and feelings.

A notebook open to two pages with notes on a carpeted floor.
Fig 1. A constellation of notes.

Books

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Le Diable au corps by Raymond Radiguet
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
La muerte de Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück

Music

"The Wuthering Heights" by Sakamoto Ryuichi
"Amore" and "Solitude" by Sakamoto Ryuichi
"The Girl - Theme" by Trevor Duncan
"Yumeji's Theme" by Umebayashi Shigeru
"Romeo and Juliet" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
"Overture" and "Metempsychosis" by Zhao Jiping
"Blackstar" and "Station to Station" by David Bowie

Film

Les Quatre Cents Coups by François Truffaut
Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou
Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov
2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrik
La jetée by Chris Marker
In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai
L'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud by Louis Malle
Hiroshima mon amour by Alain Resnais
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

And More

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by Simon Flesser & Simongo

- Andrea