Short film has become an increasingly valuable tool for other artforms, but Jennifer Mcginn says it needs to be valued as an artform in and of itself.
Film and art are generally acknowledged as two distinct arenas; sometimes conflicting but rarely harmonious. Since its moment of inception, film has struggled to establish itself as a medium worthy of exploration and critique. It has always been banished to the realm of popular culture, presumed to be an artistic imposter ? superficial, flippant and passive. However, film has elevated its profile in recent times. The realisation of film as a multi-dimensional practice has shaken the realm of the arts. Film bases itself on the image, but also incorporates sound and this fusion results in a sonic and visual assault, not matched by many other art forms. This visceral immediacy creates a confrontational, provocative and emotive medium. Consequently, the arts have begun to wake up to the potential of collaboration with film. Specifically short film.
Freedom
Short film has exploded in recent years. It has filled a niche that craves a more diverse and inspiring cinematic experience. Short film screams, debates and rages where other forms of film have slept, mumbled and wheezed. Although confined to stricter budget parameters, short film has a huge amount of creative freedom. The medium was largely ignored for a long time and existed under the radar of the art world. This allowed short film the freedom to develop and blossom outside autocratic and canonised institutions, outside audience pandering, outside budget demands. It is immune to the conventional trappings of narrative film. This freedom provides space for multiple creative visions. It also embraces the rupturing of conventions ? something the disillusioned audiences of today are crying out for.
Funding for film is notoriously difficult; however, the virtues of cost effectiveness and accessibility have encouraged the UK Film Council to start channeling money into short film funds. There is a Digital Shorts fund and a new initiative called Cinema Extrema ? a collaboration of Film Four and the New Cinema Fund to encourage experimental film. There is a mounting number of film distributors specialising in short film, such as Dazzle Films and Future Shorts. The concept of the short film festival has enjoyed increasing success in recent years, with Brief Encounters in Bristol and the roving OneDot Zero being the best known in the UK.
Crossing boundaries
The immediacy, accessibility and malleability of short film have spawned an era of artistic fusion in which the lines between film and art blur. The onslaught of digital media has carved a space for the moving image in the art world. Internationally respected artists such as Barbara Kruger and Willie Doherty characteristically fuse text and moving image as part of their oeuvre. Digital media have spawned a generation of student artists focusing their energy into video installation and short film. Galleries, including the ICA with its Becks Futures programmes, provide a home for such experimentation. The decision to show film in a cinema or in an art gallery is becoming progressively more difficult to resolve with shorts like Chris Cunningham?s Flex shown in art galleries and Lynn Fox?s music video abstractions shown as shorts. Music is now synonymous with short film ? existing in a beautifully realized relationship. Chris Cunningham has worked almost exclusively with the DJ Aphex Twin to create a litany of audiovisual experiences whereby at times, the music and the image become indistinguishable in a dreamlike audiovisual symphony.
A concept such as Future Shorts perfectly crystallises the potential of short film. Future Shorts was launched with the intention of bridging the divide between mainstream cinema-going and the ghettoised world of short film. Realising that the genre tends to cater for a niche demographic, Future Shorts was an attempt to come up with a revised, innovative mode of screening for these little masterpieces. By altering the presentation of shorts into a compilation that tours independent cinemas nationally, Future Shorts focuses on a deliberately eclectic mix of film that spans comedy, drama, pop promo, animation and social documentary in a vivid and highly successful attempt at revitalising audience interest. At each event, a series of shorts is screened, matching the timeframe of a feature film. The deliberately eclectic mix demonstrates the unrivalled emotive power of the short. A single viewing will ambiguously juxtapose bizarre animation with hard-hitting social documentary, abstract experimentation and pop music videos.
Inspiration
Future Shorts is a burgeoning example of the egalitarianism of short film. The label is to be launched shortly in Ireland and has been established in over thirty cities worldwide. Future Shorts is dedicated to providing quality programmes of short films to audiences everywhere. From villages to cities, from festivals to bars, the aim is to take away the stigma that short film can have and make it accessible and inspiring to a future generation of film-makers and audiences. The ultimate aim is to provide an accessible database, where films from across the globe ? from Tokyo to Toronto to Tehran, can be exchanged and promoted.
Future Shorts positions short film as a cog, albeit the main cog, in a wheel of media expression. The films regularly sit beside music events and video installations. One of the overarching objectives of Future Shorts is to provide a platform for emerging talent. It seeks to encourage discussion and exchange of ideas, but ultimately to level the playing field ? screening new directors alongside more established names such as Mike Leigh and Michael Gondry. It extends this same sentiment to other forms of creative production, aiming to provide a platform for musical and artistic ambition. Future Shorts runs a night in conjunction with Rock ?n Roll cinema, whereby unsigned bands have a chance to perform. It also collaborates with the vjing collective ?Exceeda?, fusing narrative with visual imagery. Future Shorts has also collaborated with Glastonbury, the Big Chill and Bestival and will be fusing with more international music festivals over the coming years. These partnerships demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between film and music, where audiences are seeking out a more sensational and fluid experience.
Short film can no longer be seen as distinct from ?The Arts?. Initiatives such as Future Shorts, as well as the various short film festivals, highlight the potential, brilliance and ingenuity of short film. Short film has demonstrated, through its admittedly brief trajectory, that the arts and the moving image are by no means mutually exclusive. Short film encapsulates the true essence of creativity and expression, and is not restricted by commercial necessities, by financial restrictions, by egocentric self-aggrandising. It is democratic, boundary rupturing, nurturing and innovative. The moving image and the arts? The moving image is an art.
Jennifer Mcginn is Director of Future Shorts Ireland. For more information on Future Shorts t: 020 7734 3883; e: info@futureshorts.com