Chris Rock and Javier Bardem in a still from 'Look at Me'.
In bookstores, novels and story anthologies share the same shelves.
It's about the quality of the writing, not the format.
Some of the most successful and beloved series are made up of 20-minute episodes.
So much so that sometimes the viewer is encouraged to binge on episodes, one after another.
The short film is brief and it is cinema.
It can even be signed by a renowned director.
However, it hardly has a presence both in the market and in the conversation about the seventh art.
And that last year there were 471, only in Spain.
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Carla Simón: “I know little about my mother.
I always have to invent it”
The Venice festival has always welcomed short films in its official section.
But the artistic director of the event had never dedicated an explicit mention to them in the presentation of the program.
He stressed that this year's harvest was extraordinary.
“It is a contest very followed by the public, although little by the press.
Important authors have emerged from there, who have also filmed feature films.
It was his trampoline and his gym”, says Alberto Barbera now.
And he insists: “We have four pearls, authors who agree to measure themselves with the dimension of the short without giving up the creative dimensions.
This is not some reassuring, second-division exercise."
They also have a notable Spanish presence.
Below is a review of each proposal.
'Look at Me'
Two stars: Javier Bardem and Chris Rock.
A director as well known as the British Sally Potter.
And a tense creative and human clash with love and the sound of drums in the background.
“It's true that shorts are often seen as practice for the 'real' stuff.
But, in reality, they are very difficult to do well, like stories.
In an era where the ways of absorbing the moving image vary so much, including extremely short forms on social networks, it is good to explore different durations”, says the filmmaker.
In her case,
Look at Me
was one of the stories that she had to compose in the feature film
The Roads We Don't Choose.
But the director immediately realized that this material “demanded its own space”.
And she, of course, gave it to him.
A good short film, according to Potter, must have “a clear structure, some surprises and progress all the time.
And no explanation."
Impossible to better summarize
Look at Me.
'Letter to my mother for my son'
After winning the Golden Bear with
Alcarrás
, Spanish moviegoers began to wonder what would be the next thing they would see from Carla Simón after such a triumph.
Well, she has presented a short film at the Mostra
,
Letter to my mother for my son
.
A lyrical, delicate work, in super-8, shot when the filmmaker was pregnant with her son, Manel, who is now two months old.
Simón started from some nude and pregnant photographs.
And through written texts, images of herself and other fictional images, the director composes for the Miu-Miu brand a tender letter about motherhood and the grandmother that Manel will never know.
'Maid'
Still from 'Chambermaid', by Lucrecia Martel.
“Lucrecia Martel's short has the same beauty and ability to surprise as her best feature films,” says Barbera.
Which sets the bar high.
Because the Argentine filmmaker is considered one of the most talented authors of her generation.
She is endorsed by films like
Zama
,
La ciénaga
or
La Niña Santa
.
Here it focuses on a woman who asks to work as a domestic worker, while she deals with her family torments.
“They asked me to find ways to connect contemporary dance with audiovisual language.
I decided to focus on the continuous movement of the body and the discontinuous movement of audiovisual language, in an exercise on linear and non-linear time.
Fortunately, where one intention fails, another is born, destined, sooner or later, to fail”, explains the director on the festival's official website.
'In quanto a noi' and 'A finite war'
Still from 'In quanto a noi', by Simone Massi.
Simone Massi is the least known of the group of directors.
Although Barbera says of him: “He is a genius of animation”.
Another indication attests to the importance of the creator:
In quanto a noi,
inspired by a poem by Eugenio Montale, has the voice of Wim Wenders;
and
A finita war,
his second short film screened in Venice, is narrated through the words of Gino Strada, the now deceased surgeon and founder of Emergency, an NGO that for decades has traveled to open war fronts around the world to heal the wounded.
In a very short space and few animations, Massi contains the recent history of Italy and the horror of armed conflicts.
Just five and four minutes, respectively.
It's what good shorts do.