A short companion film to Gravity, Aningaaq is 7-minute tale that directly corresponds to a scene in the full length feature.
Directed by Jonas Cuaron, it neatly fills out a conversation from the movie and provides a little story of its own too.
> LFF 2013 review of Gravity
> Official site
> Reviews of Gravity at Metacritic
> Interview with Jonas and Alfonso Cuaron about Ano Una in 2008
Most of this year’s live action shorts are screening in selected cinemas across the world now and will be available on iTunes Stores in 54 countries across the globe beginning February 21st.
A list of where they are showing can be found on the Shorts HD website.
PENTECOST (Peter McDonald and Eimear O’Kane)
The story follows an eleven-year-old boy who is a last-minute call-in by his local church to serve as an altar boy at an important mass.
Technical details are available here.
RAJU (Max Zähle and Stefan Gieren)
The story is about a young couple (Julia Richter and Wotan Wilke Möhring) who arrive in Kolkata, India, to adopt a young child.
The official site is here.
THE SHORE (Terry George and Oorlagh George)
The story of two childhood friends, Joe (Ciarán Hinds) and Paddy (Conleth Hill), who are divided by 25 years of misunderstanding.
The official site has lots of information and Terry George has done a 15 minute interview (highly recommended).
TIME FREAK (Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey)
Time travel comedy in which a an inventor gets the opportunity to relive the same everyday situation.
The film’s Facebook page has a lot of information and the filmmakers recently did an interview with Blog Talk Radio.
Norwegian story comedy about an old man with not long to live who decides to forgive his brother for a disagreement years ago.
The film has a Twitter account (@TubaAtlantic) as does the director (@HallvarW). You can also listen to this interview with him on Soundcloud and check out his Vimeo channel.
> Official Oscar site
> Oscar Shorts
> Steve Pond at The Wrap/Reuters on this year’s live action shorts
> Past winners of the Oscar for Live Action Short at Wikipedia
Video sharing site Vimeo is preparing for its second Festival + Awards.
This is a combination of a film festival and awards ceremony designed to showcase the best in original online video and judges this year include director Edgar Wright, actor James Franco and Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood.
Along with YouTube, the site has proved a valuable outlet for filmmakers of all ages and levels from around the world.
Director of the Vimeo Festival + Awards, Jeremy Boxer recently said:
“The aim of the Vimeo Festival + Awards is to become the gold standard for creative online video. We designed the program to focus on discovering the best new talent and to give that talent a platform that will catapult their careers to the next level. We are proud to reveal our new panel of esteemed judges.”
Submissions are not limited to works that have appeared on Vimeo but the original content must have either premiered online or have been created between July 31, 2010 and February 20th 2012.
Vimeo have said that winners in each category will get a $5,000 grant to make a new film.
The overall winner gets an additional $25,000 grant.
Complete rules and restrictions are available at Vimeo’s award site, so be sure to check them out here.
If you haven’t entered already, submissions close on February 20th, 2012.
Here are last year’s awards:
Here are the links to last years:
This year, it has recruited the following people as judges in these different categories (some of which are new):
ACTION SPORTS (New)
ADVERTISING (New)
FASHION (New)
Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty have created a stunning time-lapse video of Yosemite National Park in California.
Part of Project Yosemite it was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II with a variety of Canon L and Zeiss CP.2 lenses.
The song used is ‘Outro’ by M83 from the album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
This behind the scenes video shows how it was shot:
> Project Yosemite
> Find out more about Yosemite National Park at Wikipedia
Michel Gondry has done a ‘sweded’ version of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
The term comes from the French director’s Be Kind Rewind (2008) where video store workers (Jack Black and Mos Def) remake films on the cheap or ‘swede‘ them.
In the film the tapes are described as being shipped from Sweden as an excuse to charge higher rental fees and longer wait times.
As part of the marketing campaign for Gondry did a sweded version of the actual movie and now he’s done this version of Scorsese’s classic of urban alienation.
I especially like how he’s done the ‘You talkin’ to me?’ speech.