Short Film Festival

This week was the York BAFTA Short Film Festival - it is our favourite York event of the year. Rather than just say - it was brilliant, I have listed the films we saw. The films came from all over the world and really lived up to expectations. They are grouped together as 5 or 6 films of various categories [drama, comedy, experimental etc] and if you don't like one, then another is around the corner in 12 minutes or so. The whole city is awash with people going from one venue to the next, a very dynamic event.

The photo is a shot I took as we rushed from one venue [The Yorkshire Museum] to another [The City Screen cinema]. I have no idea what the people were doing but I liked the light.

Drama

• Adult - Australia. Just your everyday tale of guilt, gay porn, Greece, Australia, LA, family rejection, drugs and death. All in 12 minutes.
• Hymen - Morocco. A young couple on their wedding night working out how to shut up the baying expectation of the wedding guests.
• Elegy - Spain. Peer pressure and bullying and guilt in a high school.
• Backstory - Germany. A life story told at high speed in 8 minutes.
• All The Rest is the work of Man - France. An Algerian refugee looks for his sister - or is it his sister?

Experimental

• Noche - Spain. Just great arty filming
• Reverie - UK. Young Londoners sounding off
• Plasma Vista - UK. Weird CGI stuff about prosthetics
• Alexithymia - UK. About feeling no emotion.
• Leisure - Australia. Contrasting lives of a lonely old vacationer and a maid at her hotel.
• Rope - Germany. Photo-montage version of an Ambrose Bierce short story.

That lot was Wednesday evening: more to follow.