My name is Craig Ranapia. I’m the resident (and appallingly slack) culture blogger for Public Address and secretary for the Auckland Film Society. But, in the end, my only qualification for being here is that I’ve been watching films — long, short, highbrow, and low trash — for over thirty years.
Short films are too often, and too glibly, written off as student work or what you do when you can’t get a “real” movie together. It’s the kind of thinking that says a three minute pop song is intrinsically worthless next to a three hour opera; or that the quality of a novel can be measured on a set of kitchen scales.
Here are three really short films that are safe for work, not least because you can get through them in just under ten minutes and, I hope, will provide you with pleasure and food for thought to last all day.
Despondent Divorcee
1995, NZ. Writer/director: Jonathan Ogilvie
One of my favourite long short films, Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) is a moving picture made up of stills and a voice over, a genre film that sports with genre conventions. Jonathan Ogilvie plays a similar game with a single photograph and a noir-ish voiceover recounting a failed affair. But here, the devil is in the last detail, and you might come away wondering if it’s wise to believe everything you see or hear…
Good Intentions
1989, NZ/UK. Writer/director: Peter Wells
Twenty five years on, it’s easy to imagine Peter Wells’ personal but still pointed ‘Postcard from New Zealand’, commissioned by Britain’s Channel 4, giving conniptions to the guardians of 100% Pure New Zealand’s “brand”. There are no fairies at the bottom of this garden, just a Kiwi Greek God and a film-maker with an all too rare ability to wryly smile at himself. New Zealand has changed a lot for LGBTI since 1989 (for better and worse) but we still build homes, make connections and find ourselves going to the most surprising places in our own backyards.
The Black Hole
2008, UK. Writers/directors: Phillip Sansom & Olly Williams
The Black Hole isn’t startlingly innovative in form or content. It’s a sub-three minute gag about a bored office worker, a malfunctioning photocopier, and the infinite human capacity for letting greed trump good sense. There’s no reason for it to be here apart from being pure deadpan fun, but that’s nothing to sneer at.
One of the more pleasant problems with doing this post was winnowing down a long shortlist of films legally available to view here. While I’m always going to be thankful for Show Me Shorts and the New Zealand International Film Festival’s ongoing commitment to short films, it would be a shame if they became seldom-seen curiosities. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right: Less is more.
Craig Ranapia lives in an unfashionable corner of Auckland’s North Shore with his potential husband, a part-time dog and an unfeasibly large DVD collection. He is open to all reasonable offers.
