Considered the premier showcase of short films and a launchpad for many independent filmmakers, the Sundance film festival has been running for over thirty years. The festival traverses many styles, from wild comedy to reflective poetry, to documentaries and fiction. Each film breaks through its limited timeframe with an expert level of artistry and story that will resonate with the audience long after it ends.
Last Friday, 9 September 2016, Circle Cinema held the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Shorts, a 95-minute theatrical program of eight short films selected from this year’s film festival.
The first film, “Affections”, was an intriguing story of how our emotions can play tricks on us, following a woman who uses adultery as an escape from her loveless marriage. The second short film, “Jungle”, which was my personal favorite, is about betrayal and two gentlemen who are trying to make a good life for themselves in New York. The fourth, “Bacon & God’s Wrath”, is a documentary about Razie, a Jewish woman who is turning ninety and decides to try bacon for the first time.
The fifth film, “Her Friend Adam”, is a story about jealousy. Robert (a writer) is jealous of his girlfriend Liv’s (a painter) best friend Adam. Liv gets mad at Robert for looking through her phone and they have a fight.
The sixth film, “The Grandfather Drum”, is another one of my favorites due to its Native American heritage and its particularly interesting premise. The film kept me sucked into to the story and eager to learn more about their native heritage. It’s an old native folk tale about an evil spirit that terrorized an Indian village in Canada. One of the elders in the village learned of an ability that he possessed that allowed him to cast out the evil spirit using a drum. The man as he got older passed away the evil spirit came back. At this point, the man’s grandson learned that he too had this ability as the drum called to him.
The eighth film “Thunder Road” is a story about how different people deal with death in different ways following a boy as he memorializes his grandmother’s death by dancing beside her grave.
If you’re an avid film lover or filmmaker I encourage you to check out the Sundance Film Festival on their website.
