The short stuff

>> Les 10 Jours 100 Courts celebrates non-feature-length filmmaking

by MATTHEW HAYS

Despite their popularity with audiences, short films continue to face the age-old dilemma of distribution. Movies are easier to sell and showcase at feature length, and after their festival lives are over, too many great shorts fall by the wayside.

Thus short filmmakers must rely on the kindness of short film fests like the new Les 10 Jours 100 Courts. Coordinated by esoteric film guru Bernard Boulad, this fest's debut features a delightful range of films from home and abroad. Highlights include:

Neap Tide Concordia film school grad Daniel Wincenty's short is an ambitious entry about the struggles of one young man's (Constantine Kourtidis) efforts to come to grips with his father's failing health and the breakup of his long-term relationship. Though the acting wavers a bit throughout the film, Wincenty's strength lies in his open-ended narrative--he never offers any easy, simplistic closure for his characters. Neap Tide is a sharp and angsty little film.

Straight From the Suburbs, Carole Ducharme's 24-minute short, has done the fest rounds but is worth catching once more. Her striking, cartoonish art direction, coupled with a campy acting style make this turning of the tables all the more rich. Done in the style of an old Doris Day movie, Ducharme has a young straight couple face the horrors of life in a gay world.

Clandestin (Stowaway) A taut, beautiful example of the potential uses of animation, filmmaker Abi Feijo employs "sandimation," in which the entire film is made up of images formed in sand. The tale is dire: a stowaway tries desperately to figure out how to get off a freighter ship without anyone noticing. A top-notch bit of animation from the NFB, based on a story by Portugese writer José Rodrigues Miguéis.

There are a number of films that have already played at recent Montreal film festivals, including the World, New and Image&Nation, that are thankfully getting additional screenings here. If you missed any of these, here's your chance to catch up. They include: When the Day Breaks, Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis's artful Cannes-Award-winner, beautifully composed and told from the perspective of a pig; Zyklon Portrait, Elida Schogt's haunting glimpse of the Holocaust, in which she uses home movies of her grandparents; Bully Dance, a children's film about the lessons of overcoming the oppressive domination of a neighbourhood bully that never feels preachy; The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg, NFB vet Paul Driessen's droll take on childhood imagination; and Take Out, Jean-Franç#231;ois Monette's unusual and clever romance about a delivery boy's tryst with a man (played by Daniel MacIvor) who is getting over a painful breakup.

Les 10 Jours 100 Courts screens from Friday, Nov. 24-Dec. 3 at the NFB and Imperial. Info: 861-9030 or www.cinemalibre.com