Movie Producers Defend the Short Film Genre

Directors and Actors state that short film is necessary; the young sibling of features films discovers new talent

By Reforma Group
/ EFE

Guanajuato, Mexico (25 July 2003) - The young movie directors and actors who participate in the Expresión en Corto International Film Festival defend the importance of the short film as an alive, driven, and necessary genre so that new, undiscovered talent can be revealed. Coming from 29 different countries, the makers of the more than 200 short films that will be shown in the next few days at the festival, have found a warm, receptive, and excited audience.

“Part of the beauty of the short film is that they have nothing to do with big money, but with an idea put onto film,” explained Seth Kenlon, a young cinematographer and writer, presenting the short Cornered.

In Cornered, Kenlon and Arayna Thomas, the film’s director and producer, tells in seven minutes the story of a young artist who isolates herself from her family and her friends, to end up in a room in which the darkness overtakes everything little by little.

Ms. Thomas remembers that short films are a “very artistic” genre in which, since there is no need for major financing, you place your worth in the artistic matters of the film “the way it comes from your heart.”

The young directors and actors gathered in Guanajuato for the largest festival of short films in Latin America. Many of the participants have transferred to the screen the anxieties of those who start in the entertainment field.

One original and reflexively critical of the world of “grand cinema” is the short Casting_busco Fama! by Mexican director Laura de Ita. Of the eight actors that open in the sixteen minutes of the film, six of them are women, and they tell their misfortunes and prejudices that they must face when they take their first steps into the movie world.

“In Mexico, when you tell your conservative family that you want to be acting, you might as well be telling them that you’re going to be a prostitute. People who you think would ever say that to you - they reaffirm it. It is all very difficult,” remembers De Ita.

The young actresses criticize their possible boss - his machismo, his indifference to the sacrifice that they made to get into the movie business. “I kept asking the crew ‘how is it going?’ and they all hate the casting,” she declares. “In Mexico, the directors are not making feature films one after another, as it may be in other countries. So then, the only way to get work is in short films,” she points out.

Short films are also a haven for directors frustrated with making commercials after film school.
Casting_Busco Fama! tells also of the problem of criticism directed at women who are new to the film industry. In fact, women are often openly criticized, De Ita says.

“We identify ourselves with those women who are being murdered. I have family there. Since I am not a politician and I am not moving to Juarez, whatever I can do, I am going to say something,” added De Ita.

Indeed, for Arayna Thomas, director of Cornered, the most valuable thing about short films is that they cost less, and so they require fewer concessions than feature films. Short films allow for greater artistic risks, and more personal topics.