At the end of October, two annual film festivals (with similar acronyms) return to encourage short- and long-form binge watching. Launching first on Oct. 24, the 16th annual San Jose International Short Film Festival (SJSFF) has scheduled four days of programming at the CineArts Theatre in Santana Row.
Like a literary short story, a short film only has to suggest a world rather than having to build one entirely from scratch. Of the 100+ films to choose from, Black Mirror, the consistently dystopian anthology series by Charlie Brooker, is an undeniable source of inspiration for many of the narrative filmmakers. About-faces and abrupt tonal shifts can also characterize the limits of a short film’s story arc.
Stéphanie Bélanger’s Lumen harnesses all of the internet’s potential for menace and then upends it by arranging an IRL meeting for the characters.
In Kathy Fusco’s Catherine & Michael, the 1980s film star Molly Ringwald plays a middle-aged woman whose marriage is passionless. It’s hard not to see Catherine as an extension of Ringwald’s iconic adolescent characters. If Andie from Pretty in Pink (1986) had been able to predict a marriage stifled by domestic boredom, she never would have chosen Blane over Duckie…