Extremely Shorts Film Festival

Friday, June 6, 7PM & 9PM: Screening

Saturday, June 7, 7:30PM: Screening and Whole Foods Market Award Reception 
Aurora Members $5, Non-Members $15 (Door Sales Only At This Time)

The Extremely Shorts Film Festival is a juried competition of adventurous three-minute or shorter films and videos from around the world.  Jurors David and Nathan Zellner finalized the selection of 27 films from over 120 submissions. These short films will be screened on June 6 and 7 at Aurora Picture Show, 2442 Bartlett Street, at three separate screenings: Friday, June 6 at 7PM and 9PM; and a Screening with the Awards Reception on Saturday, June 7 at 7:30PM.  
 
The annual competition brings to the forefront the latest in artist-made experimental, narrative, and avant-garde short film. At each screening, audience members will be invited to cast votes for their top three films to determine the winners of the 2014 Extremely Shorts Film Festival. The screening includes an international selection of films from established filmmakers whose films have played in other film festivals to an 11 year-old filmmaker.  Several student films were selected this year, including works from Texan Christian University, University of Houston and Texas A&M.  

The Austin-based filmmaking duo, the Zellner Brothers, will be in attendance for all screenings. On Friday, the screenings will have food and drinks available for sale from the Whole Foods Market food truck.  On the final night of the festival, admission will feature a reception courtesy of Whole Foods Market with the Awards Ceremony to announce the top three cash prizes selected by the audience.  Special thanks to Saint Arnold Brewery and Magnolia Hotels for their support of the festival.  

The following films are included in the program:
 

Maybe Another Time
Directed by: Khris Burton, Martinque, France
Marc and Julia just found each other, yet they already have to say good bye...

Expose on an "Outlaw"
Directed by: Tyrone Staples, Dearborn Heights, MI
An expose of drag race car driver Cheryl Gamble.

Cherub's View
Directed by: Eva Sigurdardottir, Reykvavik, Iceland
What would you forgive if you had an angel to protect?

Sadie
Directed by: Anne Mason, United Kingdom
Some men know where to look for love. Mr. Walters goes looking in a brothel. We know he is doomed; we know his quest for love in the form of the elusive Sadie, is futile, but still we root for him. This is a story about anticipation and disappointment; realisation that sometimes, we can fool ourselves until we become foolish. Sadie will never be as wonderful as the idea of 'Sadie', but that's a discovery Mr Walters needs to make on his own.

Everything is Looking Up
Directed by: Debra Sea, Bernidji, MN
A mediation on early twenty-first century life.

The Long Night
Directed by:Emma Penaz Eisner, San Fransisco, CA
In a sequence of surrealistic images, this stop motion animation threads through the intervals and spaces of 'The Long Night.'

ROCK
Directed by: Scott Keiner, Los Angeles, CA
A regular office birthday party turns violent when an annoying delivery man has a hard time accepting who's boss.

Played Through Fashions
Directed by: Tom Helberg, Spring, TX
A tribute to lost cinema at an intersection of analog and digital media.

A Cup of Coffee
Directed by: Peter Blackmann, New York, NY
A father and daughter sit down to have a nice awkward chat about her career over coffee.

Black Box Recorder
Directed by: Abinadi Meza, Houston, TX
"They recorded babies; they recorded animals; they recorded the sun." A strange window into a future in which we will have become mysteries to ourselves and the only one left to talk to will be a disembodied voice.

Living Fossil
Directed by: Sean Hanley, Brooklyn, NY
Springtime along the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs spawn on beaches under the glow of the full moon. LIVING FOSSIL is a brief glimpse of a 450 million year old ritual.

Yield    
Directed by: Caleb Wood, Dear River, MN
In this film roadkill deaths are documented and animated collectively.

Raw Data
Directed by: Jake Fried, Boston, MA
Animator Jake Fried works with layer after layer of ink, gouache, white-out and coffee to create a deeply textured and truly psychedelic animated short.

Contents of C_____'s Box, in no particular order
Directed by: Ian Berry, Portland, OR
A short-film about the events in our lives that we choose to remember and episodes we conveniently ignore. The documentarian uses a box of mementos left behind from a failed relationship to explore the feelings of nostalgia and regret that germinate from hindsight and lonely Saturday nights.

Horses
Directed by: Michael Rader, Brooklyn, NY
Through the use of animation, a group of horses reach for their original potential.

Кошка
Directed by: Auden Lincoln-Vogel, Andover, MA
An experimental collaborative animation with original score, drawn using charcoal, pencil and cutouts. The short follows a cat who picks up a telephone and runs away with the receiver.

Genesis
Directed by: Janaye Brown, Austin, TX
A video portrait of a ride at a traveling carnival.

Knitmare Before Christmas
Directed by: Rachel Cunningham, College Station, TX
Many people know the idea of the 'ugly Christmas sweater.' We may wear them to parties as a joke, but then we pack them away or throw them out and forget about them. What happens to the sweater afterward? What if, once rejected, the sweater's feelings are hurt? What if it wants revenge?  This stop-motion short explores such a relationship between a boy and his ugly sweater.

Mr. Sadheart's Small Day
Directed by: Robert David Duncan, BC, Canada
Mr. Sadheart journeys by train to an unknown destination.

The Zombie's Trip
Directed by: Jim and Nick Zounis, Adelaide, Australia
After a sudden turn of events, a zombie is suddenly brought from the world of fiction into the world of reality.

Abductive Object #4
Directed by: Kera MacKenzie, Chicago, IL
Part of a series of investigations into alien subjectivities, the inner lives of objects, and mysterious events. A single floating shot reveals a room waiting for interpretation.

Torres Colony
Directed by: Alexandra Constantinou, Houston, TX
Torres Colony is a fake documentary based on NASA's plans to build colonies in space during the 1970s. The footage is appropriated from NASA's documentaries made during the 1950s to the 1980s. During this time period, America was very optimistic about space travel and exploration and believed that the Torres Colony could be built by the year 2000. This video explores an alternate time line in which NASA did begin work on the Torres Colony.

Pellucide
Directed by: Dawn Ohmer, Houston, TX
The video represents a woman growing into her own sexuality.

This Is It
Directed by: Alexander Engel, Brooklyn, NY
These kids are best buds. Through college. Through life. Through that first apartment together. Or so they think. There' just so many responsibilities, you know. So many things pressing between them and that friendship. Life. Family. Women. And really- I mean, really, is that big a deal if your stupid houseplant doesn't survive the lease?

Interstates
Directed by: Jeffery Chong, BC, Canada
Interstates is a film that captures the essence of a winter drive through rural New Hampshire and Maine by focusing on the journey's ever-fleeting scenery. Long road trips with unvaried scenery are forgetful, and remembering such journeys is like recalling a feeling without the imagery. Often the driver concentrates only on the destination, and the repetitive landscape transforms into hypnotic abstraction. This film recreates this dream-like state by extracting and sustaining the droning occurrence of power lines, trees, headlights, snow banks and highway signs.

FAKE IT
Directed by: Nick Bontrager, Fort Worth, TX
FAKE IT is a collaboration project. TCU students and faculty performed, destroyed, burned, exploded, and more, over the course of a week to create slow motion videos. This video is a small compilation of those videos.

GIF Preservation Project
Directed by: Ian Byers-Gamber, Bloomington, IN
"With the death of the internet soon upon us, archival practices need to be updated and employed to better serve future historians and bored teenagers. A personal passion of mine has always been the GIF as both art form and entertainment. I want to preserve these GIFs for all time, not just internet time, and have therefore printed them onto film for safe storage."

ABOUT THE JURORS   
Aurora is honored to have the filmmaking team of the Zellner Brothers from Austin, TX for this year's juror. David and Nathan Zellner are Austin-based filmmakers who have written, produced, and directed numerous award-winning shorts and the feature films GOLIATH, KID-THING, and KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER.

GOLIATH premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, while KID-THING followed a 2012 Sundance premiere with an extensive festival run, including an international premiere at the 62nd Berlinale and a retrospective of the Zellner Brothers' work-to-date at BAFICI 2012. KUMIKO premiered in U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance 2014.
 
ABOUT EXTREMELY SHORTS FILM FESTIVAL
Started in 1998, the Extremely Shorts Festival is a juried competition of adventurous three-minute or shorter films and videos from around the world. Each year a different juror (esteemed filmmaker, film programmer or arts curator) selects 20-25 mini-masterpieces to be shown at a two day screening event. Audience Choice cash awards are given for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The short format of the festival encourages innovative approaches to movie-making in a range of genres including narrative, art, experimental, documentary and animation.