The South Valley’s Poppy Jasper International Short Film Festival will kick off its ninth season Wednesday – and movie-goers this year will enjoy many high-quality cinematic gems among the 30-minute-or-less films showing at the Granada Theater in downtown Morgan Hill.
The 2012 collection of short films cover the genres of drama, comedy, creative media, social commentary and documentary. They reveal a much darker tone than in previous years, focusing on psychologically intense subject matter played out in the cinematic storytelling.
Although with 22 films, this year’s festival is showing about half the number of films from last year, the quality of the acting, screenplays, music scores and cinematography surpasses previous years’ films.
For film fans, here are some cinematic standouts to especially watch this week:
- “Hatch,” directed by Christoph Kuschnig, is a 19-minute foreign-language film from Austria that follows two couples in Vienna who must make difficult decisions about leaving a newborn baby in an adoption agency’s baby hatch one Christmas night. It’s a powerfully haunting story told in a simple, almost documentary style that focuses on the issues illegal immigrants face trying to live their lives in stealth. This film was selected by the Poppy Jasper jurors as “best overall” for the 2012 festival.
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“The Future” was directed by Venetia Taylor, a filmmaker from Sydney, Australia, and received the “best comedy” award from the Poppy Jasper jurors. In a tight 8 minutes, the story starts off innocently enough when a man proposes to his girlfriend at a fancy restaurant. The woman’s wish to find out what will happen to their marriage in the future results in some very humorous revelations when their elderly selves magically appear at the scene. Taylor does a marvelous job with comic dialogue as the two couples argue among themselves.
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This year, the jurors selected the 15-minute film “1000 Grams” as the winner for “best documentary/social commentary/creative media.” The film is about “flesh in all its meanings,” according to filmmaker Tom Bewilogua. It will definitely make audiences ponder relationships with wealth and our bodies. Many people who see this film will find it confusing and also preachy in what it’s trying to say about the collision of wealth and poverty in contrasting the world of liposuction with that of starving people.
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The documentary “Carbon for Water” would have been a better choice to receive the “best documentary” award. This engaging 22-minute film by filmmakers Evan Abramson and Carmen Elsa Lopez details the struggles the people in Kenya’s western province face in dealing with a cholera-tainted water supply and cutting down their forests to get the fuel to boil the water to make it safer to drink. The society stresses that come from this dilemma of resource use is leading to growing conflicts that might one day bring about a civil war in the region.
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The excellent “Crazy Beats Strong Every Time” by filmmaker Moon Molson is a powerful story of young African-American men in New Jersey dealing with their own identities in a culture of violence. The 27-minute film contains powerful acting in a dramatic thriller of a story where the main character must make a life-or-death decision. Every shot in the black-and-white film shows a mastery of cinematography. It might be worthy of an Academy Award nomination for best live-action short film.
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The 7-minute film “A House, A Home” by Oregon filmmaker Daniel Fickle is a beautifully bizarre dreamscape of cinematic vision. In it, a young artist ventures away from his home to reconcile his past. The film won the Poppy Jasper’s “best drama” award.
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At 20 minutes, the quirky dark comedy “Losing Ferguson” by Trisha Gum tells the story of a young woman named Rebecca who, facing tragedy, lives her life around her childhood imaginary friend “Ferguson,” a strange chimera of a raccoon and a rat played by an actor in a suit. The story ends with the woman finding, through a romantic encounter, a way to let go of her past and gain a fresh start at life.
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With no dialogue, “A Russian Elephant in the Room” is a wonderfully poignant 12-minute film by Tanya Andrews set in the streets and public woods of London. A Russian immigrant fills his days as a street performer in Covent Garden and meets a young boy whom he mentors in the art of clowning. The haunting score in this music sets a powerful tone of tender emotions.
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“The Drifter” is a 15-minute film by Los Angeles filmmaker Christopher Williams that features an outstanding performance from actor Alex Klein who plays “Jesse,” an Iraq War veteran. Jesse suffers a traumatic reaction after finding out he is being “stop-lossed” and forced to return to Iraq for another tour of duty. This psychological thriller develops its intense story layer by layer as Jesse’s girlfriend and a drifter have their lives placed in danger by the increasingly deranged veteran.
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