Flickers on the Wall: A First Flicker

I’m a fan of introductions. Not of people, unless they’re stopping by for tea or a movie night. I don’t care who you are, oh gentle reader, and I can’t think of a reason why you should care who I am. No, I like introductions for books, speeches, and, of course, columns. I like introductions that let me know (or in this case, let you know), what to expect in all those words. So, hello. Welcome to my monthly looks at the world of genre short film.

There are no monthly magazines at the newsstand that contain the latest crop of short films, nor are there easily attainable anthologies. Most shorts don’t have a national “publication” date. Finding short films is trickier than that, and forget about getting this month’s new releases. It doesn’t work that way. Quality shorts tend to hit the festival circuit, and if a movie has any success, it could be on it for several years, slowly making its way from city to city. After that, a few are released in DVD collections. Others may end up on disks paid for by the filmmakers, and some will join the dross on YouTube and MySpaceTV, lost in a sea of “man being hit in the nuts by a football.” Besides pointing out that it’s hard to find many shorts (I’ll do my best to get you directions), this should give you an idea of what I’m counting as a “new release.” From time to time, I’ll look back at classic shorts, but for the most part, my focus will be on current movies, where “current” includes anything in the last three or four years.

I’m the odd man out at The Fix. Surrounded by literary folks, I’m the one that cares about pictures: many, many pictures displayed in rapid secession. If it weren’t for the podcast and audiobook reviewers, I’d be made to stand alone in the broom closet. Instead, we get a small space in the attic. Of course we don’t talk to each other…

So, why does The Fix, whose readership has a literary bent, have a column on film, and why does that column restrict itself to short films? I’ll skip the direct popularity comparison—everyone likes movies, after all—and instead go for interaction. For a hundred years, literature has influenced cinema, and cinema has influenced literature. Many of the most successful films came from novels, either relatively unchanged (The Lord of the Rings, The Maltese Falcon), or altered almost beyond recognition (The War of the Worlds, Planet of the Apes). The science fiction genre was created in literature but now blooms in film (well, sometimes blooms, sometimes wilts). But it hasn’t been a one-way street. It’s hard to find a story or subgenre which hasn’t been influenced by film. The birth of cyberpunk is often discussed in the same breath with William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer, but that puts us in the wrong medium. Cyberpunk, that very visual subgenre, grew slowly in a long line of dystopian movies such as Alphaville and Soylent Green (based loosely on a novel) till it exploded with Blade Runner, a year before the publication of Neuromancer. Hackers fought enhanced yakuza in the name of mega-corporations on paper for the next ten years, but it started on celluloid.

The simple answer to “Why short films?” is that The Fix is a short fiction review. It would be impolite to be the only one at the table commenting on longer works. Of course, the simple answer is the true one, but let’s not get obsessed by truth. Instead, I’ll focus on the fact that short films, like short stories, can be brilliant, multilayered, intriguing works of art, and short rarely gets press. They can also be iconic for a subgenre, representing the ideas and styles that define it.

Let’s look at steampunk. Rising out of the ‘70s cyberpunk revolution, literary steampunk owes as much to cinema as it does to the written word. The typical story—as much as there is one—is set in a world not unlike Victorian England, where steam power rules, but with several anomalous technological advancements such as clockwork computers. The story may have “punk” elements, but is more likely to resemble a Victorian/Edwardian adventure romance. That suggests that Wells and Verne may be the originators of this subgenre. Yes, they are, but not because of their novels. It really started with 1950s and ’60s cinematic interpretations of their books. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), From the Earth to the Moon (1958), and Master of the World (1961) were filled with the retro-tech that would later act as the basis for steampunk stories. Master of the World even gave us Vincent Price at the helm of a nearly unstoppable zeppelin.

None of those are short films, nor recent. Thus, I finally arrive at the meat of today’s column: The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (26 min.  Directed by: Anthony Lucas. Written by: Mark Shirrefs. Produced by: Julia Lucas). Nominated for an Academy Award in 2006, this long-titled animated short is the epitome of steampunk. It is also a superb film, and chances are, you’ve never heard of it.

Jasper Morello, a disgraced navigator, is given a commission on the metal airship, Resolution, with a captain none to happy to have him. Their mission is to test the theories of eccentric professor Belgon, who believes that altitude may be part of a cure for the disease that is ravaging the land. There’s little hope that he’s right, but with a plague so virulent, anything is worth a try. Their journey leads them to an abandoned dirigible, a floating island in the sky, and monsters, both human and otherwise.

With Jasper narrating, the film has the feeling of an old-time radio play. The dialogue, rich with loss and hope, is compelling without the picture. The heroic music and thud-thud-thud of the propellers pull the viewer in even more. Featuring the voices of Joel Edgerton, (Owen Lars in episodes II and III of Star Wars and Gawain in King Arthur) and Helmut Bakaitis (The Architect in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions), the audio alone would be an excellent buy for a clever podcaster. Those of you old enough to remember The Shadow or Inner Sanctum will be transported to your childhoods. For the rest of us, this is something new.

This makes it sound as if the visuals are unnecessary, and in a way, they are. Yet, it is with those images that Jasper Morello truly excels. The animation is a combination of silhouettes (for the characters), object stop-motion, and 3-D effects, and it is beautiful. The unusual combination lets the viewer feel how different this world is, how far away. Yet we never lose the visceral nature of it; real gears turn real gears, and you can all but taste the oil.

One of the best shorts of recent years, Jasper Morello is a must-see for anyone interested in steampunk—and for everyone else.  Just as any discussion of cyberpunk is incomplete without referencing Blade Runner and The Matrix, so it is with steampunk and The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.

Unlike so many shorts, I’m happy to say that you can get your hands on this one. It can be found on the DVD, A Collection of 2005 Academy Award Nominated Short Films. If you can play PAL, a special edition version (no change to the film, but with a commentary track) is available from Madman.com.au. (And did they send me a free copy for this plug I’m giving them? Nope.)

Because of its success, and because it was made in Australia, where funding for features is hard to come by, but cash for shorts can be got, we haven’t seen the last of the intrepid and justifiably depressed aeronaut. There are plans for him to return in two more shorts: Jasper Morello and the Secret of Alto Meas and Jasper Morello and the Ebenezer of Gothia. Following in the footsteps of Lucas and Spielberg, Anthony Lucas and producer Julia Lucas have renamed the first episode Jasper Morello and the Lost Airship. Ah well, what’s in a name?