The short film is not only a visual visiting card but at its best can be a work of art in itself.Study the student work of many established film-makers, or their first cinematic efforts, and often can be discerned in embryo form, the look, technique, style and concerns that subsequently inform and define their feature films. Yet the short has a life of its own, and a shape, and an energy, and should be compared to the writings of Guy de Maupassant, or an Etude by Chopin, and not only as a postcard-trailer for a feature to come. In Britain, shorts for many years preceded the feature in commercial cinemas, until the Eady Levy was abolished and the financial benefits that had gone the way of British short-film producers or directors who had the luck to see their efforts turned into 450 prints and more to circulate with a major studio release, evaporated. The haven for the short was the film festival but when both the Berlinale and Cannes relegated programming a short,always hitherto screened before  a competition entry feature ,into a single programme,or two, grouping all the competing shorts,few festivaliers at the major festivals seen any of these new shorts at all,At Cannes they seem to be shown on the hottest afternoon of the year,and the grand auditorium holds the film-makers and their mothers or funders.There is now the Cannes Corner, deep in the bowels of the Market, which has become a lively rendezvous for short-film-makers,programmers, and enthusiasts, with its admittedly tiny screening rooms but well- documented catalogue and video library facilities, and well-attended panels and networking social events.Across the globe are many film festivals still exclusively devoted to shorts- and France still perhaps hosts the most famous, in chillier Clermont-Ferrand in February,though Oberhausen, Krakow and some other long-established events still champion the format.The European Film Academy, with the help of some Northern beverage, tries to help shorts gain audiences at various festivals, and assists prize-winners to become official candidates for the BAFTA and Hollywood 'Oscar' awards.DVDs and online submissions proliferate and few of these aspiring ,mostly young film-makers, will ever receive the accolade of a crowded Zoo-Palast delightedly applauding the brilliant short-film-parody of blessed memory The Waving Girl(Das Winkende Madchen,but excuse my German as I never formally studied the language) which of course won the Golden Bear, and led to the sequel The Return of the Waving Girl(I am not even going to try write that original title).Disney ensure their short animation films get wide exposure(though rarely in festivals) yet animated  features from Disney and more recently Pixar have sailed on to the Croisette, though let's not forget it was the Berlinale that screened the original Cinderella, in 1951.Manga and genre shorts also have their place in festivals and benefit from big screen exposure.Occasionally enlightened TV networks such as Channel 4 in the UK, or ARTE across Europe, screen short films and do much to help their directors, but it is still the preserve and the privilege of film festivals to champion this miniature filmic art.

Often a film-maker is obliged to deliver a short as part of a degree course, and it often comes with local restrictions or conditions.Such was the case with the debut film of the Siberian-born,British-resident Dimitry Kalinin, who as an alumnus of the increasingly noteworthy London International Film Festival delivered himself of a delightful cinematic jest HOLY SMOKE, which almost brought down the house when it was premiered as part of the annual pre-Graduation screenings of the LIFF in the superb,and packed auditorium deep within the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.It was also screened on April 26th as part of the Studio 35 Comedy Film Festival in Columbus,Ohio, so it warrants a mention here.Also, but don't let me partisan,because I make an apparition tres fugace in it, alongside professional actors from Romania and elsewhere.Given the LIFF's dictates about budget,it says a lot of Kalinin's film-making skills that he managed to secure only professional actors for the leading roles,and it was all filmed,I think,in one day.Watching some of the shooting, in a Maida Vale church, I was struck by Kalinin's confident yet engaging way with both crew and cast and the result is a lively skit, with the noted comic actor Nickolas Grace as a visiting Bishop who quickly recognises what a chastised altar-boy has naughtily slipped into the incense.It runs for less than four minutes, has some witty dialogue and another capable professional(Timothy Walker) plays the Vicar who admonishes the reprobate.It is complete in itself, and will make a perfect curtain-raiser to put a festival crowd in a good humour.Seen only on vimeo it probably will not have the same effect.

Now Kalinin's second short, a complete contrast, OVER has just been screened, in his presence, at the curiously-titled  Schwein Gehabt(its arts centre venue seems to have been, literally, a slaughter-house) in Karlsruhe, and also at the Art Color  Digital Cinema International  Film Festival in merry Montreal. This is a gift for any festival as there is no dialogue at all.In just 9 minutes OVER brilliantly conveys a sense of infinite longing and regret and perhaps reconciliation, in the lush countryside near Cork, with its porrtait of a George Clooney-esque solitary painter,who seems to be visited by, what can I say without giving away too much?-a night rider.There is a motorcycle crash in the background, and some haunting original music, and the whole is most handsomely filmed.The director himself appears in the film, which wordlessly expresses many mature emotions.

Another death, and complicated amorous relations figure in Dimitry Kalinin's latest,longest short SHINGLE,  which in just under 13 minutes, sketches the web ensnaring a doctor. his patient,and a female lover.With a contemporary seaside setting, it is about to embark on the festival circuit and I hope its success will assist Kalinini's transition to better and longer things, and a feature in the future.

Phillip Bergson