Sundance shorts, part one

There are plenty of shorts being shown at Sundance, and this year they're posting them and you can download a bunch. Here's a few:

Black and White Trypps Number Three
Directed by Ben Russell

A guy with a camera focuses on another guy at a rave. That’s the entire movie. A bunch of people jump up and down and nothing else happens. What a crashing bore. The only thing positive one can say is that it makes the feature after it look somewhat better. This is the worst film of the entire Sundance film festival.

Fence

Directed by Ricardo Iscar
& Nacho Martin

The sound was off for most of the screening and nobody really seemed to notice. A bunch of Spanish Fishermen corralled a school of tuna in the open ocean ages ago, and the filmmaker recorded it for posterity. We see the tuna panicking at the surface, and the fishermen hauling them in when they tire out. Like they say about sausages and laws. Not for the feint of heart.

Freeheld

A documentary
by Cynthia Wade

Ocean County (NJ) Police Lieutenant Laurel Hester is dying. The fact that she is gay and has been living with her partner Stacie for years, didn’t really matter one way or another to the people who worked with and for her. However it seem to have mattered to the board of Freeholders of Ocean County, because they decided not to bend the rules a little and when Hester dies, Stacie would be broke and out on the street. This is about a local movement to fight this, because it’s clearly an injustice and nobody actually is defending this action except for one guy on religious principles.

So we have interviews with Laurel and Stacy, some friends and local journalists, and it seems a clear cut case of discrimination. None of the Freeholders would interview the filmmaker, and although we see them at public meetings, we don’t hear their side of the story.

It all ends happily when the Governor intervenes. The thing is workmanlike and well made, and is one of the few short docs that actually has a story to tell.

God Provides

Directed by Brian Cassidy
and Melanie Shatzky

A tour of Post Katrina New Orleans, we see a preacher taking photos to show what God’s wrath is like and a bunch of other people just getting on with their lives. Not as bad as it sounds, although rather boring for the most part.

Master of Reality

Directed by
Matthew Killip

One of those films that are just a bunch of home movies being edited together and somehow manages to get into a festival. This is not really good or interesting. The filmmake tells the story of Ronny Long, who likes horror flicks and is a big wrestling fan. He got in the news by hurting himself when he was a kid. This is actually rather boring.

To Whom It May Concern

Directed by
Mitch McCabe

A woman films herself taking photos of herself over a period of several years. For the film, she purchased some film of the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2004 Republican convention. Her boyfriend edited it and parts of it are actually funny.