This year, I’m kicking off Sundance with one of their short film programs. Dipping my toe in the water, as it were, before plunging into the vast selection of exciting features. Not to say that shorts can’t be exciting; In fact, these films got me excited about this festival all over again. Here are four films from the Short Film Program 2.
Azi (Montana Mann)
Teenager Azi (Dior Negeen Goodjohn) joins her best friend Morgan (Emma Filley) for a weekend by the lake. Just the two of them, Morgan’s dad Ben (Dan Thiel), and his lady friend, Elizabeth (Breeda Wool). From the moment she buckles her seatbelt, Azi is put off by her.
The girls have a good time at the lake, Ben even joins in on the fun, but Azi’s eye keeps being drawn back to Elizabeth. When Azi tries to get her towel from under Elizabeth, they share a tense, uncomfortable encounter. Elizabeth later tries to claim she was joking, but Azi doesn’t respond. She keeps her poker face, and she does not waver. Instead, she pushes back with a quiet confidence and leaves Elizabeth faltering to find a proper response.
A not-so-subtle undercurrent of this film is race, with Azi being the only person of color in the otherwise-white family outing. Wool gives a strong performance as the unlikable dad’s girlfriend trope, but Goodjohn is the true star here. Despite having fewer lines, if not the fewest, you can feel her energy shift with a glance, and her presence becomes powerful. Written and directed by Montana Mann, Azi was a great start to this program.
The Flowers Stand Silently, Listening (Theo Panagopoulos)
In the 1930s and 40s, Palestine was under British occupation. A Scottish missionary, using a 16mm camera, filmed the hilly fields of flowers, camels, and footage of local Arab Palestinians to produce some of the earliest known color footage from this region. Filmmaker and researcher Theo Panagopoulos digitized two of these films, titled “Wild Flowers of Palestine” and “Floral Beauty of the Holy Land,” and presents them with added intertitles in both English and Arabic. Even over eighty years later, the colors of the flowers, the beauty of nature, even the color of the women’s dresses is breathtaking.
This tranquil footage is juxtaposed with the awareness of what Palestine is today. As we take in the verdant landscape while reading one title describing “…Images of a land my grandparents were born in, grew up in, and were forced out of,” there’s a simultaneous admiration of beauty and also grief for what once was. Panagopoulos also notes that within 45 minutes of footage, only two minutes and thirteen seconds show Arab Palestinians.
The Flowers Stand Silently, Listening is a powerful piece of art. Without ever leaving its view of the past, it never leaves the back of your mind what those same hills, those fields, those towns might look like today. The slow, wistful notes of the ney in the background add to the beauty and the mourning, and the film is dedicated to those Palestinians gone, as well as those who survive.
Out for Delivery (Chelsea Christer)
Terminally ill Joanna (Deanna Rooney) has just been told there’s nothing more they can do. With maybe two months until complete organ failure, and living in a state that allows for end-of-life options, she makes the decision. She has the medication ordered and out for delivery, she’s made the appointment with the funeral home to be picked up. Her affairs in order, she awaits the final moment when the truck pulls up…only to deliver next door and take off. Her phone beeps: Delivery Delayed.
From the first phone call to the last frame, Out for Delivery is a dark comedy that fucking delivers on the dark. As Joanna fights with customer support, argues with a neighbor (DeMorge Brown), and deals with a funeral home employee (Martin Starr) that arrives early, we’re whiplashed between the humor and the touching drama underneath. Rooney is a star, and perfectly delivers every line, every sigh, with the resignation to the fact that she’s still alive. Though Brown’s appearance is brief, it’s nonetheless effective, and Starr exudes the jaded cynicism of a guy who picks up bodies for a living as only he can.
Christer killed it — pun absolutely intended — with this script, and nails the bright tone to contrast its morbid humor. While the pacing is perfect, and this story isn’t any longer than it needs to be, I could somehow still watch a whole TV series or feature of these characters interacting. Out for Delivery, if anything, over-delivered for me. This was exactly my type of humor, and I can’t wait to see what Christer and crew do next.
The Eating of an Orange (May Kindred-Boothby)
In this animated short, A woman lives a life of conformity and regulation with other, identical-looking women in a home walled off from the world. One day, she takes an orange from a woman from the other side of the wall and smuggles it back to her room. With one taste, she’s transported to another dimension, one with brighter colors, no restrictive clothing, and loads of sexual energy and symbolism. Writer, director, and animator Kindred-Boothby paints a dazzling picture confronting the ideals of women’s sexuality and social conventions, with colors and framing that are ceaselessly eye-catching.
There’s an interesting contrast of the heteronormative world within the walls, where men visit and everything is a plain, neutral color palette, and the world within the orange that is vibrant, explicit, and far more enticing. This sapphic, citrus, and at times surrealist short is delightful, intriguing, and powerful. Though it’s the only animated short in this program, rather than feeling out of place, it makes The Eating of an Orange stand out all the more.
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