Here are the 8 international finalists that made up the ballot for the 9th Annual Chlotrudis Short Film Festival. This year’s strong set of selections runs the gamut of style and story. Take a look at the 8 entries and the talented individuals from across the globe who submitted them.
Entropy and Me by Car Nazzal (USA – 7 minutes) – A story of a chaotic, messy, cluttered room and the artist who lives inside of it. Trash, clothes, boxes, suitcases, pictures, books, moldy cups all pill up on the floor making it hard to tell where the room begins and ends. While she is comfortable with her room, her family and friends are not. Could such a disorganization be a work of art?
My name is Car Nazzal. I am an independent filmmaker. I started making films at age twelve and stuck with it ever since. I shoot in 16mm, Super 8 and HD. I have experience with non-linear (Final Cut Pro) and linear editing. I have taken a number of film classes at De Anza College from Directing, 16mm I,II,III, and HD workshop. My passion is directing, and I am interested in learning as much as I can.
Gaining Ground (Land Gewinnen) by Marc Brummund(Germany – 20 min.) – A young illegal immigrant couple spends their time furtively avoiding the German authorities, until the wellbeing of their young son dictates that they resolve their untenable situation
Marc Brummund was born in 1970. He studied Psychology and Journalism in Hamburg from 1991-1996, and Documentary Filmmaking in Bolzano from 1996-1999 and has directed numerous award-winning commercials. Since 2004, he has been studying Directing at the Hamburg Media School. His films include: the shorts Home (Heim, 2005), Outside(Draussen, 2005), Cow Tipping (Kuehe schubsen, 2005), and Gaining Ground (Land gewinnen, 2007).
Lucky Numbers by Garrick Hamm (UK – 12 min.) – Derrick is a number nut. He’s in his own weird little world full of numbers. Through his obsession with counting Derrick is convinced he can predict the winning Lottery numbers and win the heart of the shows presenter Luscious Lucy. Ever the optimist. Derrick is convinced everyday will be his Lucky day. A story of hope and despair and lots of swearing. Things don’t quite work out for Derrick but he wins something money can’t bu
yGarrick Hamm is Creative Partner at London-based design consultancy Williams Murray Hamm. The ten-year-old business has been named ‘Design Agency of the Year’ twice, and is currently ranked both Number 1 in the UK Design Week Creative Survey and the DBA Design Effectiveness Table. He has been profiled in the Financial Times and Communication Arts and has just completed his first short film Lucky Numbers.
Mind the Gap by Kristal Williams-Rowley (USA – 17 minutes) – Mind the Gap follows sixteen-year-old Sara Sullivan as she grapples with her father’s inadvertent involvement in a classmate’s suicide. Unfortunately, this is nothing new for Sara’s family. As Sara explains, the average train engineer is likely to hit as many as 30 people over the course of his career. While Sara’s school mourns the loss of one of their own, Sara views her father as the true victim of the incident. Through Sara’s inner monologue, we’re given entry into the tragic side of public transit, and become aware of the wall Sara has built up to protect herself, as well as her father from their grief.
Kristal Williams-Rowley is a Boston University Film Production M.F.A graduate. She has worked as an entertainment reporter for XY TV in Boston, and as a production assistant for NBC, Direct TV, and a teaching assistant for the New York Film Academy. In November 2007, she was awarded the Boston University Lalli Grant to direct the award winning script, Mind the Gap, written by Marcy Holland. That same month she traveled to Madagascar to begin production on a documentary addressing issues and challenges of development in this third world country.
Parallel Adele by Adele Pham (USA – 16 minutes) – Two half Vietnamese documentary filmmakers, both named Adele, weave a shared narrative of mixed Asian (hapa) experiences through interviews with 5 other hapa subjects. History, memory, and anecdotes on mixed race and ethnicity are represented by archival images, super 8 film, veritae, and interview.
Adele Pham graduated from the Documentary Film Program at the New School in Spring 2008. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, and has been pursuing documentary and fiction filmmaking in New York City for the past four years. She also has a background in creative writing and design. Her film Parallel Adele has screened at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, The Aurora Picture Show, APAture, the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, and NYU.
Space by Mike Wilson (USA – 12 minutes) – Separated by stars, a girl and a boy attempt to rekindle their old romance. The girl works at a factory in space sewing space helmets for emergency evacuation. She is a slave. The boy lives in a paper house in the country. He has slept for a long time and when he awakes he is determined to meet the girl in space. Will his lightning bolt rocket ship carry him all the way through… Space!
Mike Wilson says, “I think of elaborate ideas, ones that if done in the most realistic way would require a huge warehouse, a crew of 50 and a $1,000,000 budget. However, after the initial idea is conceived, I have to come to terms with my budget of $500 and my crew of one or two and my studio space that is the size of a small living room. To compensate for my lack of money, help, and time, things must be reduced or compressed to fit the original idea. A car that was fully rendered in my imagination will become a flat printout of a car shot against a rear-projection screen. Instead of painting all of the houses in my neighborhood primary colors I will take a few discarded cookie boxes from work, hot glue the opening flaps into an arch and paint the town whatever color I like. My sets and props only have to endure long enough to be photographed. This being the case I don’t see the point in making complete objects, sketchy will do just fine.”
Victoria by Charles Sommer (USA – 12 minutes) –Victoria is a documentary short about a disheveled piano (Victoria) and the people who play her. Located in a homeless and low-income dining room in San Francisco, it could be argued that Victoria has never sounded so good.
Charles Sommer is a musician and documentary filmmaker living in San Francisco. After leaving his native Louisville, Kentucky eight years ago, Charles landed in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, working with the homeless and low-income at the Anthony Foundation Dining Room. He’s been there ever since. Charles is in the beginning stages of a documentary about the stories of people who survived war in their home countries and emigrated to the Tenderloin — just a few blocks from the birthplace of the United Nations.
Well-Founded Concerns by Timothy Crawley (USA – 15 min.) – Nathan Weller is an unapologetic germophobe. Aside from his weekly group therapy, he lives in total isolation, happily spending his days in a sealed-off bubble of an apartment. That is, until a devastating plague hits, the outside world succumbs, and a knock on his hermetically-sealed window changes everything.
Tim Cawley comes from an advertising backgroundwhere he’s written and produced hundreds of commercials for agencies in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Boston. In 2007, he wrote and directed Well-Founded Concerns. This is his first film.