2011 Sundance shorts

Sundance have announced the line-up for their 2011 short film category. The international awards cover narrative, documentary, animated, new frontier and a brand new indigenous award. Eighty-one shorts from 21 countries have been selected; here are my two favourite nominees… 

Mikey Please – The Eagleman Stag

With a name like that, you’ve automatically got it going on. Coupled with the fact that Mikey is, in my humble opinion, one of the most exciting young animators around. His film, The Eagleman Stag debuted at the Royal College of Art Summer Show and is made completely from white paper. The range and beauty of his work, created from simple A4 sheets, is almost unfathomable.

The Eagleman Stag - Set Instillation from Michael Please on Vimeo.

It’s pretty hard to work out the plot from the trailer – something to do with time?

The Eagleman Stag - Trailer from Michael Please on Vimeo.

On the Sundance website, it says the following:- “If you repeat the word ‘fly’ for long enough it sounds like you are saying ‘life’. This is of no help to Peter. His answers lie in the brain of the beetle.” Again, no further clues, but I want to see all nine minutes desperately so I can piece the puzzle together. Follow Mikey on Twitter to keep up with screenings. 

Oops – Chris Beckman

Chris gathered loads of clumsy videos from YouTube and edited them to form one long fall sequence. Some people say the fewer words it takes to wrote down an idea, the better it is – in Oops’s case, this is certainly true…

Night Photography

We ran an Editor’s Brief a couple of months back with a “Nocturnal” theme and had the most amount of applications in the history of Editor’s Brief. I’m loving the nocturnal work of Esteban Pastorino Diaz

and Alejandro Chaskielberg at the moment.

Scrooge

I’m chucking a bit of festivity your way in the form of Oblong Pictures’ famous Lego men films. I like a bit of crude Christmas cheer.

It’s much better than gut wrenching schmaltz

A Starry Night from Torchbox on Vimeo.

Yeah, we know you’ve got iPads, but why? Can you actually do any work on them? No. Then what’s your point? That you’re time and money wasters who spend 18 months working on a “modern” Christmas greeting…

Hanna

I am so excited about Joe Wright’s newest blockbuster, due for release in April 2011. Starring young actress Saoirse Ronan (the only good thing in an otherwise nauseating Lovely Bones), the film tells the tale of feral child assassin Hanna, see the trailer here. In typical Joe Wright style, it looks like a wildly ambitious, diverse and beautiful movie. It’s guaranteed to be a hit.

More Pick 'n' Mix:

Prizes

Techno