Phillip Bergson

More than a visual visiting card for a young or debuting film-maker, the short film should be a work of cinematic art in its own right, comparable to the stories of Guy de Maupassant or the exquisite etudes of Frederic Chopin. It is fascinating to view the graduation pieces or early narrative films by established directors, where often their look, style, techniques, and continuing concerns can be discerned in embryo form, and would be developed in future feature films.The film festivals are the natural home and haven for the short film, but in Great Britain shorts often were screened in commercial cinemas,coupled to a major studio picture (and until the abolition of the Eady Levy benefited from box-office commissions intended to encourage the production of films locally). At major festivals a competing new short usually preceded an official competing feature, and had its own awards, but probably because even professional audiences used it as a smoking break, or were annoyed at being obliged to wait in the foyer until it was over, both the Berlinale and Cannes not so very long ago relegated all their officially- selected shorts into one or at most two curated programmes, invariably screened on the Riviera on the hottest afternoon of the year, with the huge auditorium almost empty escape  for  the film-makers, their mother, and the hardiest of festival programmers. Few new short-makers will share the joys of a large and enthusiastic festival crowd such as when the Berlinale screened The Waving Girl (Das Winkende Maedchen,if you will forgive my German, which I never formally learned), a brilliant parody of screen credits to Ravel's Bolero,which unanimously won the Golden Bear for Best Short  and prompted a delightful sequel The Return of the Waving Girl (I am not even going to try to remember its original title).Recently Cannes has estaStblished the Short Film Corner,in the bowels of the Film Market, and though its screening rooms are tiny, its catalogues are excellent, and there are many panels, and networking events for the short film-makers and their enthusiasts and selectors.There are still notable international as well as local or thematic festivals that champion the short, from Clermont-Ferrand,in chillier February to Krakow, Leipzig, Annecy (for animated shorts,of course),while the European Film Academy has for the last decade or so- with the help of some island beverage as sponsor- highlighted short films in designated annual  events, ensuring that their prizes qualify them for eventual BAFTA or Hollywood 'Oscar' qualifications.

Yours truly has a screenplay credit on one of the last UK shorts that, thanks to its accompanying feature, saw over 450 35mm copies circulate in cinemas across the  country, while as a Jury Member in Bruxelles I was among those giving to Jaco Van Dormael his first prize, which in those far-off January days,was worth more than a fistful of Belgian francs, for his graduation film E pericoloso sporgersi, so the short film is something that I think is important. As a Jury Member at Thessaloniki, which was competitive originally (before Melina Mercouri cancelled it and others later  gave it new life and dates) only for short films, which could run as much as 55 minutes, we often had 90 minutes of films to view before each international feature premiere. Currently most film festivals impose a limit of 20 minutes for competing shorts,which rather restricted the after-life of one of the most professionally-produced selections of the 2014 Cannes Corner,The Enchanted Forest directed by Romanian Andrei Enoiu (who has subsequently gone on to become one of the executive producers of the engaging documentary We are Many,currently on release).With the mushrooming of film festivals around the globe, young hopefuls stream, submit, send DVDs far and wide,seeking what is the right of any good film, a screening before an audience in the dark.

The Siberian-born, British-resident film-maker Dimitry Kalinin swapped a career in banking for study at what used to be called the London International Film School, and with his first film, made there on a tiny budget with stringent production restrictions, HOLY SMOKE demonstrated an unusual understanding of the dictates of the short.This delightful skit runs less than four minutes, and all its principals are professional actors,whilst in the crowd scenes - I declare an interest- your correspondent makes an apparition tres fugace, with some other experienced extras from across Europe.Seeing Kalinin on the set- an actual church in London's Maida Vale-he displayed an unusual confidence, yet was able to communicate easily with crew as well as cast. The popular English comic actor Nickolas Grace pertly plays a visiting Bishop, with Timothy Walker as the vicar chastising a cheeky altar boy, who wreaks revenge by slipping something alien into the incense.The film almost brought the house down when shown in the huge-and fully filled- auditorium deep in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square at a LIFF pre-graduation show, and has just been screened at the Studio 35 Comedy Film Festival in Columbus,Ohio.

Confirming that his first short was no flash in the pan, his utterly different second short OVER- in just over nine minutes-is a gift for international film festivals as it contains no spoken dialogue at all.It is handsomely photographed in lush Irish landscapes (not far from Cork, which coincidentally was the other famed festival for shorts,like Thessaloniki,presenting them in tandem with random international feature premieres for decades- though I do not  think Rita Hayworth ever attended, though she did make it to Greece, and was then invited to Oxford where her non-attendance was legendary, but that is for another article).There is a most atmospheric original score(by Andrew G.Vassall) and the film evokes effortlessly an infinite longing and regret and perhaps reconciliation.A George Clooneyesque solitary painter in his rural cottage is visited nocturnally by a muscular motorcyclist and we realise this a ghostly visiteur du soir following a  crash. This has just been screened at the curiously-named Schwein Gehabt Film Festival (I think it takes place in a former slaughter-house, in Karlsruhe- sounds very Vonnegut) as well as at the Art Color Digital Cinema International Film Festival(in Montreal) and is now cruising the festival circuit.

Kalinin's latest short is SHINGLE, at nearly 13 minutes, also with a death, and a doctor, his patient and his lover caught in a web of complicated relations on and near a beach on the South Coast of England. It is exhilarating to see a directing talent develop and it is not meant as reproach to the short film as a format to say the next step has to be a medium or full-length feature for Dimitry Kalinin,simply because outside the festivals there a few opportunities to view such fine work. For a time Channel 4 in Britain and ARTE across Europe would screen short films, late at night or as part of thematic evenings, and now the young and hip will say there is YouTube and Apps and ups and mobile phone exposure, but a  well-made short film deserves to be seen on a larger screen and with a communal audience,just like a feature (call me old-fashioned).Disney and Pixar occasionally release short subjects into the cinemas,  though often they seem like cynical commercial exercises.But do not forget, as Cannes 2015 spectacularly reminded us with its LUMIERE screening , the origin of cinema was the short, without dialogue, which captivated,moved, and entertained audiences around the world.

Phillip Bergson