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ANIMATED SHORTS
An assortment of stories told using a mix of traditional animation, computer-generated effects, stop-motion, and everything in-between. The winner of our Grand Jury Award in this category is eligible for a 2011 Academy Award nomination for Best Animated short.
The Art of Drowning

Director: Diego Maclean

Based on a poem by Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning ponders what awaits us at the end of the line.

Bygone Behemoth

Director: Harry Chaskin

A washed-up movie monster relives his halcyon days.

The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Burger

Director: Bill Plympton

A tragic story of a bovine seduced by advertising down the path of butchers and carnivores.

Down To The Bone

Director: Peter Ahern

A boy. A babysitter. An explosive sneeze. Google it.

The Falcon

Director: Scot Hampton

Composed entirely of parts from disassembled antique/analog cameras, The Falcon follows Howell the Owl (f/256) and Professor Weston (ISO 50) as they journey throughout the Focal Kingdom searching for dinner.

Junko’s Shamisen

Director: Sol Friedman

A young Japanese orphan and her mystical friend exact poetic justice on a malevolent samurai lord.

La Nostalgia del Sr. Alambre

Director: Jonathan Ostos Yaber

A young man’s talent, miles of twisted wire, and a spotlight mix together to produce a show as never seen before.

Off-Line

Director: Tom Gasek

Off-Line is a short animated film that tells about what can happen inside a microwave oven when it is abused. It features a rather curious orange capacitor named “IZ.”

The Orange

Director: Nick Fox-Gieg

Suddenly, a humble citrus fruit is granted absolute power over the universe.

One Square Mile of Earth

Director: Jeff Drew

A series of bar room conversations featuring Bill the Bunny, Gary the Frog, Lucy the Goat, Thad the Bear, Leon the Hippopotamus and Pedro the Squirrel. Fun times await!

Poppy

Director: James Cunningham

A New Zealand soldier finds redemption in the hell of WWI.

The Polish Language

Director: Alice Lyons and Orla Mc Hardy

Using hand-drawn, stop-motion, time-lapse and computer animation techniques, The Polish Language is at once a playful and solemn journey into the sensuality, beauty and subversive power of language.

EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS
A diverse collection of films ranging from the visually stimulating to the intellectually challenging.

The Bellows March

Director: Eric Dyer

Crowds of concertinas live out a cycle of destroy-create-destroy. Dyer’s 3-D printed and hand-painted ‘cinetropes’ come to vibrant life when seen through the shutter of a video camera.

Eulogy

Director: Ben Claremont

A whole life’s story is told in just a few seconds. Eulogy is a film about life, death… and pigeons.

Feeder

Director: Joseph Ernst

A short film that will make you feel sick.

I close my eyes and walk away

Director: Michele Castagnetti

Memories turn into dreams as dreams turn into memories.

I Miss

Director: Annie Dorsen

In this mesmerizing short, a girl is prompted by her mother in the recitation of an intensely romantic poem.

Kids Might Fly

Director: Alex Taylor

A young homeless girl is taken into care. Set in an urban wilderness, this film is an offbeat and touching experimental drama about East London kids.

LoopLoop

Director: Patrick Bergeron

In a train going to Hanoi in Vietnam, the houses boarding the railroad are passing by. Using animation and time shifts this video runs forwards and backwards looking for forgotten details, mimicking the way memories are replayed in the mind.

Meatwaffle

Director: Leah Shore

An old man recalls his strange and bizarre memories

Mamori

Director: Karl Lemieux

Mamori takes its title from a place in the Amazon forest, and captures the textures of tropical vegetation and its various transformations according to the phenomena of light.

Night Mayor

Director: Guy Maddin

From acclaimed fabulist Guy Maddin comes a new quasi-documentary completely unburdened by fact.

ReRun

Director: Asif Mian

An urban odyssey of visual and audio following a young basketball player and his sneakers.

Vertigo

Director: Oscar Berrio

Poetry and video integrated to transmit a stunning aesthetical experience.

MIDNIGHT SHORTS
Bite-sized bits for all of your sex, gore, and hilarity needs.

5 Second Films

Director: Brian Firenzi

A warped-speed, breathlessly bizarre collection of comedic shorts, all exactly 5 seconds long. From the people that brought you Sophie’s Choice.

The Alleyway

Director: Cosmo Jarvis

An experimental film about an alleyway and an old man’s relationship to it.

The Babysitter

Director: Kristen Gray-Rockmaker

When a troubled married couple arrive home from a night out, they encounter a horrifying scene.

Can We Talk?

Director: Jim Owen

Vince gets way more than he bargains for when he dumps his girlfriend . . . again.

Cocoa Loco

Director: Shaka King

A short film about cocoa butter scented lotion, karmic retribution, and the strangers you call family.

Delmer Builds A Machine

Director: Landon Zakheim

An account of the most Important event in recorded history.

Dwight David Honeycutt for Conway School Board

Director: Roland Honeycutt Jr.

Re-edit of my uncle’s old political video footage in order to better convey the man.

Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses

Director: Brian McElhaney

Lyle, too scared to break up with his girlfriend honestly, enacts a scheme to convince her they MUST break up because he is on the frontlines of a vicious battle between man, beast and fowl.

Expiration

Director: Mark Nickelsburg

A lonely man courts danger by drinking a glass of milk just seconds before the expiration date.

Fix My Dick

Director: PJ Raval

A music video for the artist CHRISTEENE featuring DJ Jaunty.

Not Interested

Director: D.W. Young

A spaced out knife salesman makes the house call of a lifetime.

TUB

Director: Bobby Miller

Paul can’t commit. Paul jerks off in the shower. Paul just impregnated his bath tub.

TEXAS SHORTS
An offshoot of our regular narrative shorts program, composed of work shot in, about, or somehow relating to the Lone Star state.

Better Safe than Sorry

Director: Chris Demarais

Pigeon.  Squirrel.

The Big Bends

Director: Jason William Marlow

The Big Bends captures the story of a dying man in the desert as he is confronted by a troubled Mexican couple crossing the border.

Depth of Phil

Director: Jack Daniel Stanley

Amidst delusions of saving failed U.S. banks and car companies, an aging homeless man reconnects with a long-lost sweetheart via Facebook in this quirky Austin-set tragicomedy.

El Abuelo

Director: Dino Dinco

El Abuelo is a lyrical portrait of Joe Jimenez, Texan poet and educator, whose words connect the power of a well-ironed crease with attracting the eye of another homeboy.

The GrownUps

Director: Jason Wehling

In The GrownUps, two couples try to regroup after a dinner argument gets out-of-hand.

Honorarium

Director: Steve Mims

The arrival of a controversial figure to speak at a university conference tests the boundaries of social decorum and social duties.

Mnemosyne Rising

Director: Miguel Alvarez

A deep-space transmitter pilot begins to experience unusual flashbacks on his ship when he learns he’s being sent back to Earth.

Now or Never

Director: Aaron Burns

Henry has been in love with his best friend Alexa for years. Today he has decided to tell her not only how he feels, but exactly how deeply he feels it.

Petting Sharks

Director: Craig Elrod

The sea of love is short on sharks.

Rule No. 2

Director: Avram Dodson

Breaking Rule No. 2 leads to relationship trouble, which is bad.  But relationship trouble leads to makeup sex, which is good!

Table 7

Director: Marko Slavnic

A couple has an intimate conversation in a restaurant, unaware that their every word is being closely monitored.

Trash Day

Director: Sam Lerma

When you love your trash man, tell him with your garbage.

SX GLOBAL SHORTS
A showcase for cutting-edge documentary shorts from around the world.

The Mystery of Flying Kicks (Australia)

Director: Matthew Bate

Murder, sex, drugs, art, politics…? A film exploring the global mystery of why shoes appear on telephone lines.

Peter in Radioland (Scotland)

Director: Johanna Wagner

A carefully observed study of the director’s father Peter, who stubbornly remains in an analogue world.

Pollphail (Scotland)

Director: Matthew Lloyd

A deserted village in limbo on the west coast of Scotland where two men share an obsession with an imagined future.

Schlimazeltov! (UK)

Director: Christopher Thomas Allen

Maybe some people are just born unlucky? An exploration of luck – does it exist and if so how can you get more of it?

Summer of a Newspaper Kid (Estonia)

Director: Katri Rannastu

9-year old Marten has decided to sell newspapers during his summer holiday. The job, boring and routine at first glance, pushes the kid into the everyday reality of the grownup world, where he meets competition and cheating.

Sunrise Dacapo (12cm/Stehend) (Germany)

Director: Nina Poppe

Nature from the assembly line. An observation on the growing of geraniums in mass production and the coherence of noise and silence. The beauty of nature, apparently perfectly reproduced in artificial surroundings.

Volta (Canada)

Director: Ryan Mullins

Former projectionist Emmanual Agboyame and others tell the story of the Volta cinema and look back on the sense of community it brought out in everyone.

SX GLOBAL SHORTS SCREENING WITH FEATURES

Arsy-Versy (Slovakia)

Director: Miro Remo

A Film about mom and her son Lubos, who conquered the world upside down.

Control (Norway)

Director: Hanne Myren

Control is about the emotions we prefer to keep to ourselves.

Ivan and Ivan (Russia)

Director: Philipp Abryutin

Ivan lives with his grandparents on the tundra, fishing and herding reindeer. He and his grandfather, Ivan senior, have strong bonds both to the land and to each other, but soon, young Ivan must leave.

MUSIC VIDEOS
A range of classic, innovative, and stylish work showcasing the scope of music video culture.

Apes & Androids, “Golden Prize”

Director: That Go

BRONTOSORUS, “Amy”

Director: Pete Scalzitti

Chris Garneau, “Fireflies”

Director: Daniel Stessen

Cinnamon Chasers, “Luv Deluxe”

Director: Saman Keshavarz

The Diagonals, “Clones”

Director: Nick Smith

Fatback Circus, “Brain Damage”

Director: Rodney Brunet

Fires of Rome, “Set in Stone” (M83 Remix)

Director: Matthew Lessner

Grizzly Bear, “Forest”

Director: Allison Schulnik

Height, “Mike Stone”

Director: Justin Barnes

Heypenny, “Copcar”

Director: Joey Ciccoline

Hunter Cross and the Strays, “Twisty Ties”

Director: Paul Ahern

Kevin Devine, “I Could Be With Anyone”

Director: Sherng-Lee Huang

Man Branch, “The Gym Is All She Has”

Director: Matt Leach

N.A.S.A. “Spacious Thoughts”

Director: Mark Lomond

P.O.S. “Drumroll”

Director: Todd Cobery

Passion Pit, “To Kingdom Come”

Director: Mixtape Club

Socalled, “(Rock the) Belz”

Director: Kaveh Nabatian

These United States, “Everything Touches Everything”

Director: Maxwell Sorensen

Truckers of Husk, “Person for the Person”

Directors: Casey Raymond and Ewan Jones Morris

WHY?, “These Hands / January Twentysomething”

Director: Ben Barnes

Writer, “Four Letters”

Director: Brad Kester

FUTURESTATES
What is the America of the future? In this series of fictional shorts presented by ITVS, different filmmakers examine current events by extrapolating them into the future. By embracing elements of speculative and science fiction, each film creates a fantastic new world to make comment on our own.

Mister Green

Director: Greg Pak

A parable about change in which a jaded government undersecretary becomes the unwitting test subject for an experimental program to curb global warming.

Plastic Bag

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Struggling with its immortality, a lost plastic bag ventures through the environmentally barren remains of America as it narrates its search for its master, the young woman who owned and used it in an era long since past.

The Rise

Director: Garret Williams

In the radically altered housing market of the future, an older couple must forego their dreams of retirement and home ownership and in the process, adapt to the ever-evolving definition of the American dream.

Silver Sling

Director: Tze Chun

In the polarized economy of the near future, corporations offer subsidies to their high-ranking female employees to pay for surrogate pregnancies and chemically accelerated births. Here a struggling career surrogate must decide whether or not to carry the child of two potential clients, thus giving up her last chance to have a child of her own.

Tent City

Director: Aldo Velasco

In a world where housing is granted only to the powerful few, a father who makes his living evicting the powerless must choose between his responsibilities as a provider for his family and his moral principles.

Tia & Marco

Director: Annie Howell

When a pregnant border patrol agent discovers an illegal immigrant child hiding in her home, she is forced to question her loyalty to closed borders.

ALAN GOVENAR SPECIAL PRESENTATION

Texas Folklife will present special screenings of the films of a Texas treasure–folklorist, writer, photographer and filmmaker Alan Govenar.

Cigarette Blues (1985)

Co-directed with Les Blank, the film features Sonny Rhodes and the Texas Twisters performing at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland, California.

The Devil’s Swing (2005)

The film takes its name from a story people tell in the isolated region of the Texas-Mexico border and reveals the seemingly unrelated worlds of sacred rituals, corridos, drug lords, Pancho Villa and the tragic killing of a nineteen year old boy.

The Hard Ride (1996)

A journey into the little known world of the black ranch rodeo culture of Southeast Texas.

Little Willie Eason and His Talking Gospel Guitar (2005)

Taking place on the street and in the House of God Church south of Miami, the film highlights the man who introduced the pedal steel guitar as an instrument for the expression of faith.

The Microtones of Simon Shaheen (2010)

The film introduces a virtuoso of the Arabic oud and violin, and his Palestinian community in Brooklyn.

The Poetry of Exactitude (2008)

The film delves into the imagination of Lucien Mouchet and the 1/120th scale carousels and fairground scenes that he has been making in Paris, France since 1946.

Stoney Knows How (1981)

Govenar’s first film, is an inside look at the circus and carnival sideshow from the point of view of Old School tattoo master, Leonard St. Clair, disabled by arthritis at the age of four, who joined the circus as a sword swallower as a teenager and tattooed young and old alike for more than fifty years.