Why Watch? Peculiar, dreamlike and perfect for a Friday. This short film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1979, most likely after the entire jury was slipped acid tabs. Raoul Servais‘ mustachioed story blends Belle Epoque with Vaudeville style to create the top layer of antique bliss, but the real magic comes from front projection techniques and a black velvet background. The effect is mesmerizing. Movement isn’t fluid, but it doesn’t feel as jerky as early stop-motion, so it lives in a middle ground that perpetually confuses the eye. There’s also the fantastical nature of the tale itself — one where a man finds a bare-breasted Harpy in a fountain and takes her home only to find that she’s incredibly hungry. Partially horror and partially a surreal trip with pommes frites on the side, it’s the kind of metaphorical movie you can only watch with an eyebrow raised high. What Will It Cost? About 8 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? It seems obvious now that the short films from Cannes that do well year-to-year involve trains and slices of life. This winner from 1990 involves both, as well as a befuddled, middle-aged woman experiencing  bad afternoon that gets brightened by a comic mix-up. Having already missed her train and lost her wallet, she seeks refuge at a restaurant where she orders a salad, but when she goes to get silverware, she returns to find a homeless man eating her food. Shot gorgeously in black and white, the warm comedy of the scenario comes with sugar sprinkled on top, but a larger lesson about being aware (completely) of our surroundings is the real meal. What Will It Cost? About 9 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? This quite short but still entirely provocative short won the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. It’s the work of animator Marcell Jankovics, whose prior short Sisyphus was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 (and later used in a Super Bowl commercial for GMC). Jankovics has been called the “Walt Disney of Hungary,” which has everything to do with his place in cultural consciousness and much less to do with his actual work. Küzdők is a very brief film with awfully grand things to say. It’s a vignette of a sculptor who is quite literally destroyed by his greatest work, which comes to life while he carves. Creator and creation are both armed with chisels and chip away at each other. As the artwork becomes young, strong and beautiful, the artist ages into a withered nothingness. The whole thing is perfectly textured, capturing all of the roughness of untamed rock and bringing out a striking violence in the act of stone carving. Yet the cartoon is contemplative rather than brutal, re-framing the relationship between art object and artist with bold concision. What Will It Cost? Just over 2 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? In focusing on short films from Cannes, we land on this fantastic wonder from Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby that features a humanized menagerie going through their daily routine when tragedy strikes. Without dialogue, it seeks to share a man’s (well, really a chicken’s) life as well as a stirringly profound moment in it. The story is a triumph, but most striking is the animation itself, which flutters with a rare energy, flowing between the fantastic (a pig happily skinning potatoes) to the almost-photo-real (a lemon rolling into a gutter, the reflection off a toaster). When the Day Breaks is peerlessly detailed in its cinematography, using hand-drawn and painted elements on top of photocopies to share a wholly realized world. What Will It Cost? About 9 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? Another gem from Cannes, this short from Sam Karmann won the Palme d’Or in 1992 and later the Oscar as well. It’s a simple, very funny look at what happens when a man gets on the wrong train. Karmann converts this annoyingly relatable comic problem into a mini-adventure by raising the stakes to outlandish proportions and delivering a true knockout of a punch line. What Will It Cost? About 7 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

This is another edition of Short Starts, where we present a weekly short film(s) from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. The new animated feature Epic doesn’t seem to be high on a lot of lists of anticipated summer movies, but it is sure to draw in the kids. While Fox’s Blue Sky Studios may only be the third most significant company making animated features in the U.S., that’s still very lucrative business (mostly for the Ice Age series). And director Chris Wedge, a founding member of Blue Sky who hasn’t taken the helm of a movie since 2005′s Robots, is a name you should know in the world of animation. Even if Wedge wasn’t such a big wig, though (and even if we didn’t share a birthday, which I take very seriously), I always like devoting a Short Starts post to directors of animated works. More than most kinds of filmmakers, they tend to have begun with short subjects, and these shorts tend to be available to watch online. Both are true of Wedge’s early animated films, two of which are very crude, very short, very early examples of computer animation from the 1980s — Tuber’s Two Step and Balloon Guy — and then a later longer piece that won the Academy Award in 1999, titled Bunny. Join us in watching and learning about all three films after the jump.

Why Watch? We’ve been at Cannes since Wednesday, we’ll be there through next week, and we’ll continue to highlight short films that have played near the Mediterranean shore through then. In 2009, this short from Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland won a Special Distinction, and it’s easy to see why. With a subtle somberness that lets the danger of being 8 years old ring true, this story of a young boy who has to stand up to his bullies is fierce and also beautifully shot. What Will It Cost? About 15 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? In 1993, this segment from Jim Jarmusch‘s Coffee and Cigarettes won the Palme d’Or at Cannes as the Best Short Film. Somewhere in California shoves Iggy Pop and Tom Waits into a restaurant booth with a big pile of droll wi, and the atmosphere of a tragically unsuccessful first date. Part of the genius is Waits’ caustic mood — responding to just about everything Iggy Pop says with antagonism and derision. Of course, watching famous musicians swing through the awkward, all-too-familiar motions is what truly works. The stilted banter about first names, the small talk about chain restaurants, the uncomfortable goodbyes. All of them serve to absolutely destroy a romantic vision of rock stars that gets stuck in our eyes. The short also manages to make most people hungry for pie and coffee. What Will It Cost? About 11 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? For starters, today begins the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and this trippy short won the short film Palme d’Or back in 1955. Blinkity Blank is one of Canadian animator Norman McLaren‘s more charismatic experimental works, designed to play with persistence of vision. He scratched all of these strange little images directly onto black film leader, and accompanied them with scratches he added to the film’s optical soundtrack. Those odd noises were then added to Maurice Blackburn‘s experimental jazz soundtrack. The colorful shapes resemble abstract forms as well as the occasional bird, a favorite subject of McLaren’s. There also a number of blank frames, which he described as “sprinkling on the empty band of time.” Sometimes the shapes combine and grow, sometimes they erase one another. This fluid and immaterial rhythms of light grab fleetingly at the eye, and haunt your vision quite literally for the slightest of instants. Turn off the lights, full-screen the video and give it a shot. What Will It Cost? About 5 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? Magically engaging and beautifully surreal, this short film from Martin Rosete begins with a narrator explaining that you’re an astronaut on an alien world with only a few minutes of oxygen left and an escape pod to get to. That sense of breathlessness pervades the story as the unreliable narrator changes his mind and changes it back again in search of a worthy metaphor for an important life moment. It’s playful to the point of looking like a blockbuster from Wes Anderson. Plus, the technical side is handled with incredible care, delivering lung-filling visuals and sound cues that punctuate and nurture the strength of every story moment. With the right blend of silliness and profundity, it’s sublime in its short story perfection. Take a deep breath, and enjoy the adventure. What Will It Cost? About 8 minutes. Keep Watching Short Films

Why Watch? It’s Friday, “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal” is joyously infecting the entire internet, and the guy who made it also directed a movie about breaking into song while the walking dead try to eat your face off. Thank you, Ryan McHenry, for putting so much beauty into the world. If you need more convincing than that, you probably need to loosen your tie a bit, but if you really insist: The short is seven shades of smart with grueling sound effects disrupting sing-songy outbursts. It features a delightfully badass lead (Joanne McGuinness), and it achieves a difficult balance between genuinely disturbing moments, disturbing moments set to music, and not-at-all disturbing moments that find humor in obliviousness. Cheeky, bloody, and very funny. Watch it while refusing to eat cereal. What Will It Cost? Just about 12 minutes. Trust us. You have time for more short films.

Why Watch? This short from director Shane Leal-Willett and writer Charles Taylor is a chess match with a sniper rifle. It features a simple proposition, delivered from a swarthy traveling entrepreneur with far too many teeth in his mouth (Michael Burger). He sits down in front of a grizzled man (Brant Bumpers) who lives out in the country, and explains that he’s got an associate with a sniper rifle trained on the bumpkin’s wild-bearded head, but if he gets $10,000, he’ll leave without a fatal shot being fired. Simple, but tricky. There’s a little air in the conversation that tighter dialogue or editing could sharpen, but ultimately the work shines because of the two actors swinging deftly back and forth between confusion, laughter and empathy. It stands on a simple question of how much you trust a robber who isn’t holding a gun — game theory ratcheted up to its breaking point, but either way, it might not be the best way to try to extort money from someone. There’s some great drama here, some patient storytelling, and it leaves you asking yourself what you’d do if a blustery man made you the same offer. What Will It Cost? Just about 12 minutes. Trust us. You have time for more short films.

Why Watch? For starters, Bob Clampett was kind of a big deal and today is the 100th anniversary of his birthday. He directed cartoons for Warner Bros. from 1937 to 1947, a decade of boundlessly entertaining work. He was also a somewhat controversial character, mostly due to his insistence that he had created Bugs Bunny all on his own. That turns out to be entirely unfounded, of course, but at least Porky Pig was definitely his. The two of them face off in the first half of A Corny Concerto, the first time in WB history that two major characters shared a cartoon. The whole thing is a parody of Walt Disney’s work, Fantasia in particular. Elmer Fudd takes on the role of musicologist and conductor, rising from behind the orchestra to introduce “Tales from the Vienna Woods” in the style of Fantasia‘s Deems Taylor. He later returns for the second segment, “The Blue Danube.” The first of these Johann Strauss II waltzes is paired with a classic Bugs Bunny versus the hunter cartoon, with Porky Pig taking over for Fudd. It plays like a rambunctious ballet, the animation playfully interacting with the music. The same is true of the second segment, a direct parody of Disney’s Oscar-winning The Ugly Duckling (1939). The duckling in question is said to be Daffy Duck as a baby, though I’m not sure I buy that. The split format and the obvious parody make this a bit of an oddity for Clampett, and the Warner Bros. studio as a whole. Yet

Why Watch? Feeling more like a folktale written by children than for children, this beautiful short from writer/director/animator Brent Bonacorso blends tongue-in-cheek fantasy with the CGI chops to layer a whimsical fiction on top of reality. Beyond the evocative name itself, West of the Moon feels a lot like what Georges Melies would make if he had today’s filmmaking tools. In the story, an old man regrets a lost love and details with absent-minded precision his adventures with a card-playing robot and a monkey on a mission. Playfully heartbroken in its execution, there are touches of Tarsim Singh’s The Fall and Big Fish here, but Bonacorso proves to have a style all his own — painting with just about every color on the palette and inventing visuals with DP Tarin Anderson that command attention while defying logic. Plus, lead actor Jacob Whitkin truly brings the old man to life solely through his movements and expressions, adding a saltiness that pairs perfectly with the narration. Overall, it’s a delight from start to finish. A masterpiece of short fiction. Hat tip to Short of the Week for this gem. What Will It Cost? Just about 10 minutes. A new short film posted every week day at 2pm Central.

Why Watch? If you see a cat with human hands, don’t pet it. Just run away. Just run. It’s that simple. For those that forget, Robert Morgan‘s midnight-fueled short film is a nice reminder. In it, an old salt tells a young man the tale of a boy who found a cat with human hands by the very same well they’re visiting. What happens next is face-rippingly good. The short here is spooky like an old fairy tale meant to scare children into behaving, but it works on all ages. It succeeds through surreal imagery that brings a nightmare to stop-motion life, sound design that’s lip-smacking disgusting and a satisfyingly complete package of a story. Poe would be proud. Thanks to screenwriter Simon Barrett for posting it up on Facebook. What Will It Cost? Just about 6 minutes. A new short film posted every week day at 2pm Central.

Short Starts presents a weekly short film(s) from the start of a filmmaker or actor’s career. With the role of Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby, actor Joel Edgerton continues his rise in stardom. He even has a couple of character posters to show for his fame. Long before he was embodying a character from classic American literature, though, and long before he was hunting Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty and fighting his brother in The Warrior and even playing Darth Vader’s stepbrother in the Star Wars prequels, he was a regular figure in the short subjects scene. We can thank part of this on his nationality, as Australia is a great country for short films (it’s home of Tropfest, after all). On top of that, he came up through the film collective known as Blue-Tongue Films, alongside his writer/director/stuntman brother Nash (who is Joel’s double in Gatsby) and filmmakers David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) and Spencer Susser (Hesher). Joel made his film debut in Blue-Tongue’s first work, a nine-minute film from 1996 titled Loaded, which is directed by Nash with writer Kieran Darcy-Smith. I thought about simply posting that early baby-faced short start from the actor, but seeing as he’s in so many shorts, most of which are online, I’ve sampled five of his first appearances after the jump, two of which aren’t Blue-Tongue productions, all of which feature Joel pre-beard and pre-bulk. 

Why Watch? Sure, there’s controversy surrounding it so it’s a great water cooler topic (if you can find a water cooler these days), but all of that extrinsic nonsense detracts from the intrinsic gusto of Xavier Dolan‘s (Heartbeats, Laurence Anyways) music video for Indochine’s “College Boy.” It features some graphic visuals, including a teenaged character being crucified and shot repeatedly after being bullied by classmates. It’s a powerful if not bludgeoning work featuring some absolutely stunning black and white shots, and while the symbolism is greatly obvious (blindfolds on cell phone-armed on-lookers, Christmas lights slung over the cross), the sheer terror and isolation is still greatly palpable. Possibly, for some, to a sickening degree. When the bullies drive the first bolt through the boy’s wrists, it sends lightning up through your feet. The image itself seems to shake. It isn’t an easy piece to watch, but it’s also gorgeous, meaningful and possibly even vital filmmaking. Hat tip to The Film Stage for featuring it. What Will It Cost? Just about 6 minutes. A new short film posted every week day at 2pm Central.

Why Watch? West Edmonton Mall is the largest shopping mall in North America. It’s so big, in fact, that it has an expansive waterpark inside. The kinds of penguin and sea lion shows that you might get in a sprawling aquatic theme park? Yeah, it has those too. And a bungee jump. It’s easy to imagine that it’s overwhelming. The kind of sensory overload that’s designed specifically to disorientate a person to the point where all their money falls out of their pockets. And yet as well as that mood is captured in this fly-on-the-wall short from Evan Prosofsky, the cinematographer-turned-director finds a bit of serenity floating along the machine-made waves. Aided by languishing (often discordant) sounds, the short is truly hypnotic, luring viewers into a relaxed state with slow motion captures of crowds hugged by bright yellow tubes and sunshine filtered through industrial-strength windows. The irony — or at least the humor — of fabricating nature inside a temple to impulse buying isn’t lost in the mix, but the images themselves are presented wisely without filmmaker comment. There’s a message if you want to find it, but if you don’t, you can just as well let the endless summer whisk you away to the sunny beaches of Canada. Waterpark is presented as part of the Sunday Shorts over at Nowness. What Will It Cost? Just about 10 minutes. A new short film posted every week day at 2pm Central.

Why Watch? Because it’s been far too long since you last watched a really good movie about birds. The Thieving Magpie is the first of Emanuele Luzzati‘s two Oscar-nominated short films, the other being 1973′s Pulcinella. This painter, illustrator and animator had quite the career, designing for the opera and pop concerts as well as making cartoons. There’s even a museum of his work in his native Genoa. This medieval-inspired cartoon is one of his best. The set-up is simple – three kings, who have been warring for a century, decide to take a break and go on vacation together. How do they distract themselves? By killing birds. Yet there’s one winged creature who won’t fall to their arrows, a mischievous magpie that eludes and torments them.

Why Watch? A young girl is strapped to a table with a few medical tools at her side. Her mouth is covered in duct tape. This set up has become so standard that it comes as a free template on screenwriting software, but where this beautifully smart short from writer/director Rob McLellan gets it right is in introducing us to a different kind of Hannibal Lecter. The killer’s plaintively polite introduction is the first cold shiver, and throughout an existential session of villainous monologuing, there are a handful more that crawl into your skin and find a place to live. The parallels are eerie — the disconnect, the drive to do something others say is wrong, the freezing lack of empathy beyond an infant’s understanding (and desire for) love. That’s all echoed by a character design that uses the uncanny valley to its favor. McLellan and Craig Stiff have crafted something human that’s unmistakably not. And yet, behind those kind eyes and soft voice…it’s really hard not to like him. This is probably what happens when Blinky™ grows up and gets organized. ABE features stellar work all around. The camera (beyond a few floating moments in the enclosed space) is interesting, and the sound and score help build some serious tension, but the real star is the one holding the scalpel. What Will It Cost? About 7 minutes. Skip Work. Watch More Short Films.