DC Shorts Film Festival
Tickets available for this week, on every showcase page.
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Line-up announced for "Best of" showcases.
DC Shorts Blog
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Reader’s Choice. Woohoo!
Washington City Paper has named us the Number 1 Reader’s Choice for Best Film Festivals for 2009. We try, we really do and we’re glad City Paper and its readers recognize that. DC Shorts offers something few others do, more films more quickly than a festival with full length features could possibly hope to cram in. In a matter of hours come September you’ll be able to see a comedy, a drama, a foreign film and something you’ve never seen before in a matter of hours.
Don’t fight it, you know you want to come see us come September! If Washington City Paper and its readership ranks us like this, we must be good.
Judge Training
They came, they saw, they learned how to judge. If you’re interested in the numbers of things, we had some 109 volunteers in the U.S. Navy Memorial Burke Theater to learn how to judge shorts for the festival.
No, they won’t be holding up cards with a potential of a perfect 10 score, shorts are not something you stick or miss. They are instead judged by a number of factors including acting, technical details and script. 109 attentive pairs of eyes watched DC Shorts Director Jon Gann lay down the ground rules for how to laugh, cry, or perish the thought, roll their eyes with a short.
Judges were divided into 36 groups of three apiece, based on geography and the notoriously difficult to synchronize availability. A number of practice shorts were screened and ‘judged’ with a discussion to follow on what to do and what not to do in waxing eloquent on the trials and tribulations of any given short the judges will watch.
Serving more than just sight and sound, volunteers also tasted and smelled 150 burritos, cookies, brownies and chips from Chinatown’s eternally tasty California Tortilla. Since the judges were certainly holding information sheets and sitting in chairs, I guess that means DC Shorts services all 5 senses, but M. Night Shyamalan is a feature length guy so I guess no Sixth Sense.
Updates: Screenwriting Competition
They say that those who can’t do, teach, but in my case, I just announce. Our annual screenwriting competition is coming up. $1,000 goes to the winner of the competition with another thousand upon completion of the final film. All entries are due no later June 10, 2009 and there can be no more than 15 pages of script, so get cranking.
Each entry will be reviewed by a panel of filmmakers, screenwriters and my brethren, critics. All you need is a little Pixy dust, a touch of wishing upon a star, and I’m running out of metaphors for brainstorming and you’re raking up ideas. Don’t fight it, you and I both know that there’s a little muse in us all. The competition will culminate with the October 15-18, 2009 Script DC, where the 5-7 finalists will be featured in a live reading by a bank of actors. Audiences will vote on their favorite reading which, in conjunction with the judges’ decisions, will decide the winner.
Submit your masterfully written scripts by filling out the online registration form at Withoutabox.com and then emailing your scripts to scripts@dcshorts.com but please, these are short film scripts you’re writing, so no “War and Peace,” pretty please. There is a fee, but the sooner you get it in, the less it will be and there are discounts for those who qualify.
Meet the Staff
I’ve come to realize that up to this point, my fellow interns and my boss are just specks of data to you, names without reference. I promise, they are very real and are in fact NOT figments of my imagination.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you, my boss, Jon Gann. An accomplished filmmaker, Jon is a fun, accommodating boss with stories out the wazoo. Ask him about them sometime, the man is a wealth of insight and has a very personal perspective on film.
And in the opposite corner, my ever diligent fellow interns, Alina and Joseph (Bet you can’t tell who is who). Alina (the one on the right of the picture in case you were wondering) is heavily involved in dance. Joseph (the one on the left of the photo) is an aspiring writer. The CDs you see in front of them are submissions to the festival, ready and rearing to go to be entered into Withoutabox.com for our future referencing pleasure.
‘Best Of’ Screening
Hundreds of people attended the Best Of screening that showed the winners of the 2008 DC Shorts Film Festival Friday and Saturday night. A huge success, the U.S. Navy Memorial Burke Theater was filled to the brim with people anxious to see the absolute pinnacle of last years’ DC Shorts Film Festival.
“There were some really good films in there,” Curtis Cannon said, after leaving the theater. Cannon’s personal favorite was Irish Twins , an intense thriller about death and memory with ample parts humor and drama that never loses its razor sharp edge.
Not limited to one drama or even one country, three of the shorts were foreign language films, two were documentaries, five were comedies and five were dramas. Every one was unique and compelling in its own way, be it funny, exhilarating, terrifying, horrifying or cute.
The shorts were “very beautifully done,” Kent Morrison said, at intermission.
Morrison identified two favorites, the gritty and shocking reality of sex-trafficking in Nina Quebranda was a “beautifully done, serious subject,” he said. He described A Land Called Paradise, a documentary expressing the voices of Muslim Americans as “so warmed hearted.”
Friendly and entertaining was CU@ED’s, a comedy about two people meeting for coffee at the title restaurant with blackberry and laptop in hand that speaks volumes about modern social life.
Luis Medrano enjoyed the humor of a woman running over men in the hopes of winning Prince Charming’s heart when she brought him to the hospital in Speed Dating because it “makes me think of a lot of DC area people,” he said.
Universal in its own way was PATH, a short about a man reflecting on his girlfriend, both the positive and the negative, in a way that is funny and that also speaks to memories we all have about the heaven and hell that special someone has put us through.
“It was amazing,” Amy Friend said. Enchanted by the power of stories mere minutes long, “you watch a short film and you feel like its a feature.”
The List had all the markings of a feature length film, action, drama and huge implications for our world in its depiction of a woman being tortured for her suspected links to terrorism.
The Best Of screening set “a high bar,” Amy Saidman said. While its easy to make a horrible film, good ones are far more difficult to produce. “There are a lot of festivals of shit, and this isn’t one of them.”
Calling all Judges
As an intern I find myself summarily drafted as an emergency backup judge for last minute entries and overflow into the DC Shorts Film Festival in the event of a shortage or problem with the judges. Please help! We’ve already received 94 submissions for the film festival and we need as many judges as we can get our hands on. Last year 100 volunteer judges sifted through over 700 films to end up with 102 shorts to be screened at the festival, numbers that will be even bigger this year.
Volunteers will attend an afternoon Judge Training Session for a full synopsis of their duties in early March. From then until May 15, each team of 3 judges apiece will watch between 30 and 50 films which they will score online. We anticipate an approximately 15 hour time commitment during this phase.
For the DC Shorts Film Festival itself in September, Judges will be asked to volunteer for two shifts performing tasks including but not limited to ushering, catering and welcoming. Time spent helping out with the festival will be approximately 6 hours.
You know you want to! In addition to bragging rights of a short film judge in the 3rd biggest short film festival in the country, judges will be able to borrow films to watch at home over the summer.
Those interested are asked to send an email to judges@dcshorts.com.
“Best of the Fest”
I am pleased to announce that coming Friday, February 6th and Saturday, February 7th we will be screening the best shorts of the 2008 DC Shorts Film Festival at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. From 7 to 10 p.m. each night we will be showing the winners of the 2008 festival as well as the audience award winners. This is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the films that you might have missed last year, comedies, documentaries, dramas, animations and films by local and foreign filmmakers, many of which went on to play in festivals and theaters all over the world. The filmakers and festival organizers will be on hand during the intermission and after the screening. The audience will also get a special treat in the form of a sneak peak into DC Shorts Film Festival 2009 as well as the Our City Film Festival that will take place on Sunday, February 8th.
Tickets for the U.S. Navy Memorial Burke Theater located at 710 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW are $10 and can be purchased online at DCShorts.com or at the door, cash only. For those arriving by Metro, get off at the Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter station on the yellow and green lines. If you have any questions, call 202-393-4266.
After the festival concludes on Saturday night we welcome you to attend the celebration at Bar Louie at 701 7th Street, NW near the Gallery Place Metro Station on the red, yellow and green lines. Admission is free with a ticket from Saturday’s Best of DC Shorts screening or a ticket for the Our City Film Festival. Snacks and soda are free and there will be a cash bar.
The films to be shown are:
Winners from the 2008 DC Shorts Film Festival
The List (Best Cinematography)
A young woman finds herself being interrogated for espionage by the CIA.
La Tangente (Best HD Film)
A young man offers a woman a ride and they set off on a journey with no plans and no direction.
Bloom (Festival Director’s Choice)
The only thing standing between a Rent-A-Cop and true love are the guard dogs on a used-car lot.
Nina Quebranda (Best Female Director)
A teenage girl runs away from Mexico for the promise of a better life, but finds herself in the nightmarish world of child prostitution.
Funniest Feds (Best Local Film)
The stand-up comedy competition featured over 30 contestants - all of whom work as federal employees in the DC area.
Irish Twins (Best First-Time Director)
On the eve of their father’s funeral, Seamus and Michael gather at a local pub to confront the past.
A Land Called Paradise (Diversity Award)
In December 2007, over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they wished to say to the rest of the world.
PATH (Filmmaker’s Favorite)
A Manhattanite must decide if it’s worth staying in his relationship, even if it means traveling to New Jersey.
Other Films to Be Shown (Audience Award Winners)
Tortilla
A man goes home to Mexico to visit his mother’s grave and realizes a truth that will influence his future journey.
Speed Dating
After accidentally hitting Mr. Hot Super-Attentive Guy with her car, Kate decides to take an aggressive plunge into the dating world.
CU @ ED’s
A couple meets for the first time after meeting online in a coffee shop, and things go from bad to worse.
The Bad News Bearer
A man delivers terrible news to people who don’t want to hear it, on behalf of people who don’t want to give it.
The Collinwood Campaign
Two bumbling junior advertising executives must deliver the pitch of a lifetime.
How My Dad Killed Dracula
On Halloween night, a father recounts the harrowing tale of how he fought and killed Dracula.
The Film Festival Process, Part 1
Hi, my name is Bryan and it’s a pleasure to meet you, or at least, write this blog for your reading pleasure. I’m an intern with the DC Shorts Film Festival and my boss, Jon Gann, has asked me to keep you appraised of what it takes to prepare for our film festival that runs from September 10 to September 17.
I know, September seems like a very long time away but it hasn’t stopped us from diving into preparations for the festival. My fellow interns Joseph and Alina are staying busy keeping you informed of everything we’ve got in the works. Joseph is in charge of keeping our calendar up to date. He checks various websites for events that he then posts on the calendar and he will be making weekly video podcasts on our website about comings and goings of the following week. Alina is in charge of marketing, keeping up with our facebook, myspace and other pages and otherwise trying to attract as much interest in the film festival as possible. Feel free to look us up, particularly the DC Shorts Film Festival facebook group.
As for myself, I’m kind of the odd man out, so I find myself in charge of our blog, writing entries like this one so you can get a peak at what it takes to put the festival together. On the blog I will also be writing reviews of randomly selected film submissions to the festival. I do a lot of reviews outside of my capacity with the DC Shorts Film Festival. I write for my American University’s student newspaper, The Eagle and I have my own film review and news blog, goodmoviebadmovie.blogspot.com. While I certainly put a great deal of faith in my critiques, you don’t need to do the same. I will be writing the reviews in the capacity of an intern, not a judge, so the blog reviews have nothing to do with whether or not an independent judging panel accepts or rejects the submission into the film festival.
When a film comes in, it’s the job of myself and the other interns to process it. We rip into the packaging and extract the films that have hopefully already been registered and paid for on Withoutabox.com. We make sure the WAB number is written in sharpie on the CD itself and stick it into a paper case with the WAB and title written on it. That’s right, all those fancy packages and ever so pretty labels filmmakers put together hoping to impress judges and curry favor for their film are unceremoniously tossed into the trash. All we care about is the film itself, no matter how well done the case is, each DVD is filed in a cabinet in a row of its compatriots, indistinguishable save for a tiny handwritten label on the back.
I’ll be talking more about the festival process in coming weeks and months so check back in to learn exactly what it takes to prepare and run a film festival.
Reviewed films were randomly selected from the hundreds of entries to the 2009 DC Shorts Film Festival. The reviews are written by Bryan Koenig, an intern with an interest in film review and journalism. The opinions expressed are his own, and not that of the independent judging panel, the DC Shorts Film Festival staff, or the staff and Board of the DC Film Alliance.
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