Festival shorts competitions can be overwhelming. The world of shorts is vast, and coverage is so slight in comparison to features that it can be difficult to find a guide through the assaultive world of cinema in miniature. Screening physically and online in this year’s proudly hybridised edition, Locarno’s National Shorts Competition finds 12 films that recur some of the same themes and moods, to the extent that one wonders what the festival’s aim is with the strand. As streaming takes a nasty bite from the theatrical experience, the alienating digital futures, capitalist nightmares and physical/psychological displacement that’s occurring in every corner of these frames draws an overwhelming impression of modern anxiety.
Despite being a collection of Swiss productions, there is a global feel to the strand that stops it from being mired in one nation’s politics or a specific aesthetic movement pushed by the festival. Directed by Aylin Gökmen, Espiritos e Rochas: um Mito Açoriano (Spirits and Rocks: An Azorean Myth)  is abstract, showing the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in fragments, flicking between inhabitants of the film’s unnamed island setting with such rough and ready skill that it throws references to Carl Theodor Dreyer as much as it does to archival documentaries. In Bugs, directed by David Shongo, droning beeps overcome the soundtrack and moves between the left and right audio channel, pushing the viewer to the limits of what they can withstand. Between avant-garde techno-futurist imagery, Shongo uses elements of a desktop documentary to make the film’s point about environmental impacts on the Congo. At five minutes, it feels like it’s waiting to be put in an art gallery, when they open.Â
Indeed, there is the feeling that a bunch of institutions, like the University of Geneva or the Swiss Cinematheque, are driving the development of filmmakers alongside the festival, thus obligating their inclusion in the programme. That’s no slight on the films. HEAD in Geneva developed Alexandre Haldemann’s A Thrush Flapping Its Wings Against the Wind (Um tordo batendo as asas contra o vento), which opens with the very satisfying image of an old man’s hands peeling a whole potato in one spiralling move. Haldemann matches this with younger tattooed hands smoking. Different voiceovers provide a William Faulkner-like feel, with musings like “Where do the birds go?” while shots of wind blowing in trees show the transitory nature of life between moments. Images blur like Philippe Grandrieux, shaking the film’s focal points. There’s a trend in short films moving away from faces, in order to decentralise the viewer from that associative lure of the visage, as a shortcut to relating other feelings between filmmaker and viewer.Â
The De Facto Martyr Suite, directed by Justine de Gasquet, uses archival footage of Ibn Kenyatta alongside an interview from 2019 to trace his experiences in Haiti and New York, back through to the Great Migration. Other footage of Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale makes the project sprawl during its 18 minutes, even when its form turns new footage into poetry. Also hamstrung by length is Ben Donateo’s slow documentary Grigio. Terra bruciata (Burnt. Land of Fire), which captures fly on the wall moments in Filippa di Mesoraca, an Italian community recovering from a fire the year prior. Portraits of the town’s elders show the decay of time, while Donateo’s interest in animals, particularly dogs in architecture, oppress the viewer even more with the crushing distance between what dies and what remains forever. Each composition is a marvel of geometric form. Taking the architectural fascination in a different direction is Menschen am Samstag (People on Saturday), the funniest film in the programme. Directed by Jonas Ulrich, it’s a series of long-shots capturing off-kilter scenes of street life, like a woman locked out of her car or a deaf couple who don’t react when a person is hit by a car behind them. It has a Ruben Östlund-like touch with its cruel humour, but as meticulous mise-en-scène drags one’s eye around the crisp frame — full of angular swiss architecture and open public space — Ulrich’s own control is the most impressive.
Trou Noir (Black Hole), directed by Tristan Aymon, is by far the most conventional film in the competition. At 30 minutes in length, it resembles a TV episode. Following a group of Thrasher-donning skaters, Mid90s cannot help but hang in the air like a bad fart, but Trou Noir has more authenticity, partially through its mere modern day setting. A 12-year-old firecracker-shooting and spectacled kid in an arm cast and flat cap is the most fun, but Aymon’s visual eye and ease with actors is impressive and more than justifies this slight story’s inclusion in the slate here. Also foregrounding the narrative is Nha Mila, directed by Denise Fernandes. A woman runs into a childhood friend from her Cape Verde neighbourhood on the way to visit her sick brother in Santiago, and ends up staying at her house for the night. One wishes to avoid superficial comparisons to other films, but the resemblance to Vitalina Varela (which won the Golden Leopard last year) should be noted, if only to remark how differently Fernandes approaches the material. By resting these women against pastel coloured stone buildings, they look like a matte painting. Across an extended dinner sequence, Fernandes captures the bonds between these women and their homeland in ways both slight and painful.Â
The programme also provides a rich selection of animation. It is encouraging to see four animated shorts here, all hand drawn and given no less privilege than the narrative or non-fiction films. Lachsmänner (Salmon Men) — directed by Veronica L. Montaño, Manuela Leuenberger and Joel Hofmann — is a perfect example of short animation, with blistering colours and fast moving, simple characterisation that reminds one of Lisa Hanawalt or a Newgrounds cartoon. Drawing frantically shakes around the screen as though the filmmakers are pushing themselves to the limit to get these madcap ideas onto the page. Directed by Aline Schoch, Megamall has fun with its cutout style animation that recalls SpongeBob SquarePants as much as Henri Matisse. Set in a seemingly-infinite shopping mall, patterns that seem like set dressing begin to interact with the space in haptic ways, while characters change colour and texture with ease. Similar fabrics are tangible in Push This Button if You Begin to Panic. Directed by Gabriel Böhmer, this is a span of interminable misery with quite beautiful music and a lucid, psychedelic animation style that provokes a vibe, even if it’s not one I want to stay in for longer than 10 minutes. Peel (Ecorse) by Samuel Patthey and Silvain Monney is set in a sketchbook, capturing images from a retirement home that only move as much as they need to. The clinical and public spaces resemble Menschen am Samstag, while splashes of colour highlight medical devices even as everything else sadly fades away.Â
Given that documentaries are being pushed into hybrid spaces, and that many modern animators are covering morbid subject matter, these 12 short films give an example of contemporary moving image work pushing at cinema’s comfort zones. To experience short films like this without expectations beyond the festival’s stamp of quality is liberating.
Ben Flanagan (@manlikeflan) is a film critic and programmer based in London.
Categories: 2020 Film Essays, Featured, Film Essays
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