Short Films Seen at the 2004 Cork Film Festival

These are sundry short films that were shown before the evening features…

Cut begins with a nerdy film buff bumping into a woman in a Singapore supermarket, and he recognizes her as the country’s film censor. He takes the opportunity to offer his opinion of her work. And boy does he. A mile-a-second motor-mouth monologue winds up with a full-blown song-and-dance number. Royston Tan’s short is as funny as it is outrageous. (Seen 16 October 2004)

Ekkremes (Pendulum) is 13-minute Greek film with no dialog but definitely with a story. An employee retires and says good-bye to everyone in the office. He looks like a cross between Bob Dole and Dean Stockwell. He installs himself in a small house on the edge of the sea and proceeds to live an entirely solitary life. He hides when the postman drops his mail through the door slot. What’s his game? Is he plotting his own disappearance? Or, in some strange way, is he trying to assure his immortality? (Seen 16 October 2004)

Exposure was correctly introduced by festival director Michael Hannigan as “a non-narrative film.” A six-minute piece by a pleasant young Englishman named Peter Collis, it basically adds animation to a series of still images taken from some sort of coastal research site. This is the sort of thing you can only see at a film festival. Unless you are careful. (Seen 12 October 2004)

Fluent Dysphasia features the wonderfully exasperated and expressive face of Stephen Rea (cf. The Halo Effect), who plays a Dublin father who doesn’t even know enough words in the Irish language to help his daughter with her homework. Until, that is, he wakes up one morning, after a particularly hard night in the pub, and finds himself unable to speak or understand any language but Irish. It’s a great premise and good for several laughs. And, of course, an actor of the caliber of Rea really makes it zing. (Seen 17 October 2004)

Grannsamverkan (Neighbourhood Watch) is a 13-minute Swedish film about the pitfalls of being unfaithful right in the local neighborhood. The first filmmaking effort of Peter Barlach, it relies on suspense and wry humor to entertain, and does nothing to dispel the notion that all women in Sweden are blonde. (Seen 11 October 2004)