The Under-appreciated Short Film Genre

Can you name a single famous short film? If you can, it may take a while to get there. Short films have been and probably will always be unfortunately overshadowed by features but are a nice change of pace in the film industry. Here in Cannes, in the enormous market place lies a shorter queue of only about a dozen, waiting for their chance into the short film corner. Consisting of fifty separate computers and hundreds of titles, it is a quiet pleasant personal theatre to enjoy shorts from all around the world with running times anywhere between a few minutes and an hour.

In my time slot of an hour, I varied my choices to really see how much diversity there could be - and there was plenty. There were several delightfully pleasant animation pieces that I could not help but chuckle at but also some painfully acted longer dramas. I hate to say it but finishing some of the titles I started just was not an option. Unbearable is a strong word, however, it is truthfully appropriate.

Despite this, don't let my tartness over a few spoil the genre as a whole. Others were amazingly compelling with some exquisite cinematography and music scores that drove me right into the short. One in particular I enjoyed was titled "Tiger Hood", that documented a man's life in New York City who picked up a golf club out of a trash can one day and began playing street golf with stuffed milk cartons. It may be a strange idea but it just goes to show the versatility of short films and innumerable amount of ways one can go with it.

I may be biased because I have a background of doing some short films but the genre of short films is one that is desperately under appreciated yet so riveting within such a short amount of time. I especially encourage those of you with a short attention span and those who hate having to wait a whole week for their favorite television show to come out with a new episode to give it a try.

By: James Cullen