2007 Miami International Film Festival: Shorts Films Came Up Tall with Great Reviews

By: Erik Lopez

My foray into film criticism is one that I expected to be at least partly filled with, well, criticisms. Maybe next time. I went to the Miami International Film Festival's Short's Program thinking that I'd see a good film or two but, what I was fortunate enough to experience was a group of extremely well selected short movies & one music video that flipped my mind. I went to the short film program to see David Fenster's Wood, after seeing his feature film, "Trona", at last years' Festival.

I first saw "At the End of the Day" which is Dionisio Ceballos's first attempt at art through film. He's been painting for 10 years and he managed to transition from canvas to silver screen quite well. "At the End of the Day" flows as an unsolicited Mexican gardener spices up the ordinary life of a retired American.

Writer/Director/Producer Nick Childs, in his first dramatic short hits a homerun. Childs' "The Shovel", is a dark short film that keeps the viewer guessing in a who-killed-who styled movie.

The most vivacious of the shorts was Rubén Obregón Casas' "La Primavera", a story of a brief encounter between a US Navy Sailor and a young Mexican woman, "La Primavera" ponders the fleeting moments of uncertainty in fast emotional connections. Obregón Casas is developing the feature-length version of his award winning short, "La Primavera".

The Daliesque "Film Noir" is one of Osbert Parker's most intrigueing assemblies of imagery. This mixed media adventure combines live action, objects, photo cut-outs into a non linear story of romance and thrilling psychological tension.

The Shorts Porgram II concluded with the marvelously beautiful music video "Glosoli" for the Swedish music group Sigor Ros. Arni & Kinski's "Glosoli" is a story of drum beat and a young boy who leads a group of children across a barren landscape to what awaits them at the edge of a cliff. Arni & Kinski have made a name for themselves co-directing award winning music videos and commercials.

I was curious how Fenster would manage to create the same visual & intellectual interest that he cleverly captivated within last years' audience with "Trona". The feature film, "Trona", received a tremendous amount of critical acclaim. It is a staggeringly beautiful narrative about a man's journey through a dustbowl of a town, searching for his identity or maybe searching for something deeper. "Trona" has screened in film festivals and art museums around the world, including The Los Angeles International Film Festival, The Viennale, The Buenos Aires Film Festival, the Miami International Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art and is currently appearing on European television.

"Wood", however, follows the life of trees from a forest through the sawmills, and and documents revealingly intimate portraits of the men who work on various facets of the process. Fenster's newest film is a success in every sense of the word. His, at times, starling camera angles, his muted sound during imaginably earsplitting moments and his honest approach to the positioning of the realities of the timber industry without getting overtly political are what carry this documentary to heights as lofty as the trees in which the film features.

Fenster speaks of Stud Terkel's "Hard Times" as his inspiration for the creation of this film. The grit and authenticity of his novel appeal to Fenster who says, "the book is at the root of this project that is larger than the short film 'Wood'. Terkel's book consists of many interviews he conducted with working people representing a wide range of jobs. The interviews were then edited to appear as monologues. The individual portraits are interesting but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Together they paint this amazing picture of the United States in the seventies (when the book was written)." Fenster planson making more films in a similar style that can be put together to create the same kind of effect. Documentary film-making is quite a departure from Fenster's earlier work but he says he's drawn to film as a whole rather than specific genre within the artform. In his words, "I like the mediums of film and video and I'm interested in all the forms they can take." Fenster sees that creating various types of films will strengthen his work in the other forms.

When asked about the choice to drastically pull down the sound when it would be obvious that the machines being used are incredibly loud Fenster responded, "I wanted to partly represent the subjective experience of being in a sawmill or around all this heavy equipment. You have to wear earplugs all the time and it furthers the environment of isolation." This isolation that Fenster speaks about is one of the obvious takeaways in his documentary, yet one more message shines through. The workers appear to be machinelike as they carry out their monotonous tasks. The appearance is that if one of the cogs of the machine that these band of men create is removed then, the entire enterprise falls out of balance. Even though very little interaction between the films' subjects are captured, it's apparent that there is clearly a tight group at work.

The rawness of "Wood" balanced with the excitement and beauty of the other short films in the program made for a wonderful evening. I suggest next year, you all make it out to the Miami International Film Festival.