A Look At The SX Global Shorts Program
Coffee was not meant to be drank in a hurry. It should be slurped slowly. Unless, of course you are at SXSW Film Festival and you have your third screening of the day to dash away to, partially pissed from the well-marketed and readily-available booze. Then feel free to chug whatever caffeine delivery device you can find. But, slow your roll if you are attending a screening at the aptly named Hideout. A quaint but robust full-time improv theatre that brews amazing, much needed coffee and offers some great movie munchies next to the behemoth Paramount. This week it doubles as a screening house for some of SXSW most unique programming.
By chance – or by luck – I stumble into a screening at the Hideout that was described to me by the capable SX volunteer as the SX Global Shorts that featured gems of cinema from Estonia to Canada. Finding delight in the unknown, I get in line. I purchase a cup of dark roast and proceed into the theatre absolutely blind to the billing in the program. I was wired to view this with a naked eye, free of judgment, purely to be entertained.
The first offerings, “Mystery of Flying Kicks” by Matthew Bate of Australia, and “Peter in Radioland” by Scotsman Johanna Wagner, were entertaining shorts of things new and old and how the only constant is change, be it in art or technology. They allowed me to be completely entrenched in the event. Locked on the screen and nervous for the people that got up after they saw the film they wanted to support. I felt uneasy for them. Like those people had robbed themselves of finding a needle in a haystack of films. Something was about to happen, I could taste it and feel it while I clumsily released my grip on my coffee and spilled it all over my discount designer jeans.
Apologizing to the room for swearing out loud in the silence between the films prompted a slight giggle in the room. Dick jokes work people, even in close quartered screening rooms filled with ironic, especially luxuriant mustachioed hipsters and app-tethered highbrow geo-locating geeks. We really aren’t as serious as we think we are.
The next movie begins with me still ignorant to the billing because I couldn’t be asked to fumble around for my film pocket guide for being too stoned on El Cine (a great new hybrid from Humboldt crafted specially for SX). “Volta” appears softly like the gentle venue where she is being played. Emerging quickly as another story of change, I could see an underlying theme developing for SX Global Shorts and I was excited to see more. Looking back in time, Ryan Mullins from Canada examines the transformation of the Volta Cinema in Hohoe, Ghana by the evolutionary force of society’s needs. It tells a complex story in a very precise way that is focused on the positive things change can bring. Blackout. Applause. I clapped harder than usual, but nothing is really usual for me… so I clapped till it slightly hurt. Pants.
Still without my pocket guide, I’m fumbling at this point. I could access my phone and go all cyber on ya in the middle of the show, but that would be rude. I have some decorum. I want fair warning of what’s next. No more surprised sore palms. The movie starts and I settle in and sink deep in my vintage theatre sit. I’m not even bothered by the spring in my bum. This is fun. Fun sometimes hurts and at the Hideout, I was having hurtful fun.
The selection from Matthew Lloyd of Scotland, “Pollphail,” burns on the screen. I witness a demonstration of how quickly we get ahead of ourselves and make hasty decisions by not paying attention to technological advancements. Ultimately, succumbing to the perils of following the tried and true way. A gorgeous film.
Where is my damned pocket guide?
Are you feeling lucky? Me? Yes. Do I believe in luck? No. “Schlimazeltov,” by Christopher Thomas of the UK, takes on the mysticism of luck and how the perception of what luck is morphs culturally and superstitiously within the Jewish faith. A beautiful film that had the room chuckling with me getting stares for my perceived over laughter, which is nothing more than my normal laughter. Suck it, haters.
At last, I locate a pocket guide, resting on top of an open purse in a dark theater. Eyes up, hands down, and with slight of hand and the cover of movie theatre full blackout, I snatch the guide. Thumbing through it, I find the SX Global Shorts section hidden in the Shorts portion of the guide with no synopsis or screening times published. Ugh a waste of time and energy. I thought how did I get here to this theatre? I just showed up and got in a line and went in blind. And it’s brilliant. So, I gladly follow the program, as I believed it was serendipitously designed and should be experienced, as a glad exploration into the rhetoric of change. I close the pocket guide and with a fake coy sock tug; I bend over and replace the stolen pocket guide. We resume.
The last two films, “Sunrise Decapo” by Nina Poppes of Germany and the Estonian offering “Summer of Newspaper Kid” by Katri Rannastu, despite ratio aspect issues (which I didn’t notice) and absentee subtitles (which was very noticeable because I have never spoken or heard Estonian spoke in my life) delivered the goods with great panache. I really thought that these “errors” were deliberate choices of the filmmakers and I relished at the opportunity to decipher the story using only the images at hand. Both movies capture the cultivation of seedling and child and the moments when the official metamorphosis into adult life begins.
The lights come on and after a hurried Q&A, I open a maple bacon sucker and quietly head to the next event that is offering free cocktails and food at this vast festival. As I walk through the narrow Hideout I pass the next group waiting for the next screening. I smell the coffee. I should have paired the sucker with the coffee, which would have been supreme. I do have an extra sucker in reserve and I noticed in my new pocket guide that I found on the floor of the Austin Convention Center another screening of the SX Global Shorts is scheduled to play tomorrow at 4:00 pm at the lovely Hideout. Hmm? I might have to return and have another cup of coffee.
“Old Dogs New Tricks”
Day 1 Giveaway ….if you won this you cannot win again during the cleaning out the prize closet contest. First person to e-mail the phrase above to samthemailman@redcarpetcrash.com wins it.
