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| This Was My Son |
The programme begins with the well-intentioned oddity This Was My Son (Dir. Rob Underhill; USA, time), which sees actor Mike Wiley perform a monologue as Mamie Till , who recounts the traumatic experience of exploring her son’s body after he was brutally murdered. The history books consider her son, named Emmett, to be a victim whose violent death and open-casket funeral marked turning points in the Civil Rights movement, so This Was My Son gains some resonance as the final images and archival excerpts situate Mamie’s loss within a greater collective tragedy. The monologue itself is surprisingly free of affect, though, as the film offers it in one bland long take in which actor/writer Wiley recounts the lines in close-up. The casting choice is a major distraction, since one spends most of the time wondering while a male actor assumes the part of a grieving mother. (If the intent is to use the male/female spin and the Civil Rights movement as a backdrop for an LGBT parable, it doesn’t resonate.) Although Wiley performs Till’s heartbreak rather well, the monologue doesn’t really do the subject justice, for This Was My Son ultimately plays like a screen test, albeit a very good one. The film comes in a series of similar films by Underhill and Wiley about the lynching of Emmett Till, so perhaps it requires the full spectrum for context.
After This
Was My Son, the ONEFF shorts bring another tale of violence with Avalanche
(Dir. Thyrone Tommy; Canada, 16 min.). Avalanche
feels freshly inspired by the child-on-child violence in mainstream media with
the booming popularity of The Hunger
Games and Divergent. Nathan (a strong Darius Fisher) is a
brooding kin of Katniss with the way he wields a bow and arrow and defends himself
against his domineering father. Fisher’s fellow younger actors aren’t quite as
strong, while slow pacing and dim lighting make the slow burn of Avalanche less forceful, although Tommy
delivers a quietly compelling tale of family violence with a notably diverse
cast.
The shorts change gears with the
sentimental romance Butterflies (Dir. Cayman Grant; Canada/USA, 19 min.), which
features a well-intentioned romance between two cancer patients crossing “falling
in love” off their bucket lists. A lesson in life and death follows in When
Fish Fly (Dir. Lisa Rose Snow; Canada, 10 min.). This cute short,
winner of the National Screen Institute’s dramatic prize, sees one little girl
(Alyssa Cross) struggle with grief following the death of her mother. This
wordless short conveys both heart and humour with a likable young performer and
her trusty fish. It’s a nice example of a trend in the short circuit that
forgoes dialogue as films play better abroad with subtitles and with universal
appeal.
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| Nayan and the Evil Eye |
There’s a lot more wordplay in the winning
short Nayan and the Evil Eye (Dir. Shaleen Sangha; Canada, 8 min.).
This short is easily the best of the programme as it brings a playful rhyming
story about an unlucky boy and an all-seeing eye. The script hilariously creates
a wicked nursery rhyme as young Nayan (Neil Bhaskaran, very fun) stumbles into
ill-fortune like Jack spilling his beans. The film plays with fantasy and make
believe, all the while balancing the sinisterness of the all-seeing eye with
the sing-song cadence of the narrator’s verse. Production efforts are top notch,
especially the cinematography by Kiarah Sadigh, but Sangha’s script is the
highlight of the night. This hilarious and fantastical short shows much promise
for the filmmaker: she’s one to watch! (With one eye or two, take your pick.)
The series ends with a noble misfire when Quelle
Affaire (Dir. Ruth Lawrence; Canada, 3 min.) experiments with the
latest in technology. The film offers a quick love affair shot entirely with an
iPhone 5. The filmmakers note that they shot this film with said iPhone in two
hours using natural winter light, and without gear, tripods, lights, or sound
equipment. Unfortunately, the technical limitations show. iPhones take great
Vines and snapshots; however, as film, the images add little besides novelty as
Quelle Affaier certainly looks a step
below the films that precede it. The production itself feels haphazard and
rushed—the dinner date at a “restaurant” is clearly the living room of one of
the production staff—and the thin story doesn’t compensate for the novelty of
the experiment. The harshly-lit images probably play better on a mobile device
than they do on the biggest film screen in town, and Quelle Affaire doesn’t
make a compelling case that everyone holds the future of filmmaking in their
hands. It’s an intriguing affair, but a disappointing endnote to the programme.
(Watch Quelle Affair online here.)
The
ONEFF Shorts screened at The ByTowne on Friday, May 22.
Additional
ONEFF screenings happen tonight at The ByTowne, including the Ottawa premiere
of How to Change the World.
Please
visit www.theoneff.com for more
information on this year’s festival.
AVALANCHE
TRAILER- HD from Thyrone Tommy on
Vimeo.
