Week 4- Tutespark

With the internet being what it is today, a rapidly growing world of anything you could imagine and more, it has become a ripe medium for short films. This is due to a number of factors. Being much shorter in length than a feature film, they are more easily managed and smaller in download size. This renders them easy to be uploaded to the internet and in effect readily available for home viewers of all modem sizes. With video cameras becoming more technologically advanced along with mobile phones, filming such short films and having them viewed by the masses has never been so easy. The have chosen to include the following short films purely based on the way they have inspired me. While I viewed all three of them for the first time today, each story was one of inspiration, hope and love; three things so important in my life.

This short film, 'Mankind's no island' won first place at the 2008 Tropfest Film Festival and was directed by Jason Van Genderen. Shot in New York and Sydney, entirely from a mobile phone, this film encapsulates a feeling of profound hopelessness and, paradoxically highlights unity and love. The director has captured an enormous amount of despair in the two cities by not only filming the story line simply in the form of words (street signs, advertisements etc.) but also filming the homeless of the two cities and purposefully capturing a sense of loss in their faces. He has also, in contradiction, encapsulated a huge sense of unity, love and hope by turning the story around at the end. He did this by making a point of acknowledging a homeless man who he had had previously ignored in the film. This scene coupled with the words, 'I will not look away' instead of 'I always look away' which were coupled with the previous scene, profoundly captures a sense of unity and hope. This ignited a great deal of inspiration and faith within myself, assuming it also ignited such emotions in others, there is no wonder this film won such a prestigious short film award and, despite its low budget and technology is such a huge success in the industry.

This short film written and directed by Erez Tadmar and Guy Nattiv idealises both racial separation and religious differences. The directors then turn the story around to be one of unity and togetherness. The director does this by capturing an Arab man and a Jewish man on a train, both intentionally displaying their religions by means of a Pakistani newspaper and a Jewish pendant around the man's neck. The director's have made the distance between the two men explicitly clear, making the tension between them extremely obvious despite the lack of dialogue. When a group of Neo-Nazi men then enter the room and take notice of the Pakistani and Jewish men, tensions builds to even higher extremes. The Pakistani and Jewish men join forces, despite strong racial and religious differences that have existed over time, to get off the train and away from the Nazi's. The way in which the Arab and Jewish man come together as one towards the end provides a sense of unity. This short film should be considered as extremely significant as such religious differences and racial separation still vividly exists in today's society, for example, the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The short film 'Signs', directed by Nick Russell and Kertie Morsaii is one of love, confusion, isolation, distance, silence and the human need to have someone there. The directors explicitly capture the feeling of isolation Jason, the protagonist, experiences throughout the beginning of the short film by repetitive scenes and negative emotions. Jason's life is turned around, however, when he notices a girl working in the building across from him. They grow to share a relationship based purely on written notes and smiles. The director's have captured the human need for company and the way which simply knowing someone is there provides a sense of hope and safety. When Jason experiences a temporary loss of his short distance interest, he loses the sense of hope and comfort he held so dearly. The director's end the film by reuniting the pair both in writing and person.