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„Here's looking at you, Kid!"



A comment on "Short films 1 14plus"

7 different insights, 7 different lives, people, characters and – 7 different narratives, pictures and ways to tell a story. In “Clebs”, the camera gives a still frame which shows the everyday life of dogs at a rescue station. “Panteres” stays with the two protagonists and focusses on their appearances and bodies, only a smartphone manages to divide viewer and story from each other. “Grevilla” uses a lot of cuts to show many images, not only of facial expressions but also of a kippah, hands, tattoos, it all seems very instructed. In “Black Sheep Boy” the visualization of the story is quite extreme since it is an 2D-animation, so that the picture itself is keeping the viewer distant. In “The Flame” pan shots are used to first show us the surroundings and nature and then belonging kids, people, faces, enabling me to connect the stories that are told with the home of the narrators. “Babylebbe” ’s camera makes me come really close to the characters, their faces and emotions. “Något att minnas“ is narrated with stern images.

As always after watching so many diverse short films I feel a bit confused, but at the same time that is the thing I love about those screenings, one gets shown so many different impressions all at once. And that can be quite overwhelming, especially when one has writing a review in mind. Do I want to speak about every single film and for each give an interpretation? How did I like the short films, how did they make me feel? Actually, that is, what it’s all about, right, the emotions that are getting triggered. I start to think about the movies, that moved me the most and while, of course, acting and content, characters and dialogues play a great role in creating feelings, I realize, that the camera has its great share of importance to doing so. Especially “Babylebbe” affects me quite a lot as well as “Panteres”, I am liking “The Flame” too. Those all are shorts, where the shown images stay very close to the characters and the things happening. There may be smaller things to criticize in acting or the story line but still, I have to feel for the characters just because I am forced to look them in the eyes. With “Grevilla” and “Något att minnas“ on the other hand I cannot really connect, the artistic cuts in the first one and the missing focus on the characters prevent me from understanding the protagonists. And missing emotions in the faces of animal puppets also don’t make it easy for me to follow the story. The short movie “Black Sheep Boy” though manages to move me again by using exactly this very shallow or flat narrative but at the same time absurdly combining it with meaningful dialogue and morals („I hate the night, so I’m turning all the sunflowers to try to bring back the day.“).

Long story short – of course the camera has an influence on how I am perceiving, we are talking about film here! But still, I had to become conscious of that again, since I mostly tend to focus on the content of a movie, the what and not the how. And I think, that when the camera is very close to faces and emotions, I am more likely to really get emotionally involved in a story, I am brought closer than images of a fascinating landscape or aesthetic scenes for example could bring me. What about you?

Origin of photo material: https://www.berlinale.de/de/programm/programm/detail.html?film_id=202009531&openedFromSearch=true#gallery_gallery-filmstills-1
26/02/2020, Carlotta

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