Flickers on the Wall: The Shape of SF Short Films

In my last two columns, I commented on short films that you could acquire for home viewing, either by downloading from a website or by purchasing a DVD.  But the newest short films are rarely available.  This month, I’ll examine some of the best films that are still on the festival circuit.  To see these, you need to get out to your local fest.  With thousands (yup, that’s thousands) of film festivals running each year, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one near you.

Festivals in general favor short versions of everyday life, provided your everyday life involves painful emotional and social problems as you claw your way along as a single inner-city mother or inoperable cancer patient.  These grim portraits are quite popular as they let the audience and potential producers know that the director is very serious.  I find few things less worthy of my consideration than self-consciously serious works, so it’s nice to know that along the sidelines and in specialty fests, speculative films abide, far away from the eyes of mainstreams critics but veritably pleasing to those who seek them out.  Among those fantastical entries, a majority are fantasies in the broadest sense, where magic could be real or not, depending on a camera angle, a character’s smile, and the predilections of the viewer.  However, a substantial subset are willing to be pinned down, defined by a category.  Of these, horror is king.  It makes sense. Short films are made on notoriously small budgets, and while fright films are as happy to absorb huge chunks of cash as any other, they can get by on the cheap.

The area with the least representation is science fiction—real, true blue science fiction, with or without the prefix “hard.”  I fear part of this has to do with the interest level of festival attendees.  The average theatergoer has never heard of Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, or Harlan Ellison, and Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke are but vague literary figures of no interest. Science fiction may have exploded in big, and usually dim, blockbusters, but it has never gotten more than a fingerhold within the festival scene.  However, more than perceived popularity, money is the culprit.  Horror can often get by on minor ducats, but science fiction devours bank accounts.  Sure, a science fiction movie can be made without big bucks, but it limits the possibilities, which is anathema to the genre.  An uninformed audience member could be excused for thinking that science fiction stories are exclusively about human-looking robots existing in a future so near that it’s exactly like today, or about dystopian societies where citizens are secluded in small, bare rooms.  Advanced effects are becoming cheaper, but a majority of short filmmakers have no choice but to depict the future as astoundingly like what you see when you look out the window.

Rising in popularity is the fall of civilization, since all you need is a desert outside your window.  But while the low budget post-apocalyptic features of the ‘80s were action oriented, the new crop of shorts are more thoughtful. 

Ambassador’s Day (23 min. Director/Writer: Dave Kellum) is a prime example.  In the distant future, the surface is a sandy wasteland, and the remaining humans live belowground.  On a regular basis, the two factions send ambassadors to the surface to exchange information pertinent to each group’s survival.  The meetings are tightly choreographed so that neither side can cause offense.  This time, there’s a break in protocol when one finds his diplomatic box contains not the expected reports, but a gun and instructions to shoot the other.  With only two actors, a desert setting, and retro props, this is a financially appealing project for a cash-low filmmaker.  As the actors wear gas masks, there’s no need for re-shoots due to poor facial expressions.  The downside is that such a movie could lack visual punch.  It’s not the case here, but then I have a fondness for gas mask fashions. With comparatively few changes from frame to frame, and a slight plot, Ambassador’s Day must fly on ideas, and it does.  It doesn’t deliver simple concepts with easy answers.  It asks questions but doesn’t answer them, or even suggest that there are answers.  Its quirky dialog wobbles back and forth on the line between comedy and drama, pretending there is no such division.  In the end, Ambassador’s Day is ether brilliant philosophy or a warped joke on the audience.  Either way, it’s never boring.

Face Machine (15 min.  Director: Justin Simms Writers: Lynne Kamm, Justin Simms) follows the gas mask chic, though backing from NBC Universal make this the Paris runway version.  While keeping with an inexpensive sub-sub-genre, the filmmakers have been able to toss in enough cash to elevate a grungy future to beauty. 

The post-apocalyptic citizens have regrouped enough to form a dystopia.  The atmosphere is poisonous.  Each person survives behind a mask, breathing air supplied by The Ministry.  He who controls the air, controls the universe—far truer than any similar statement about spice.  Seeing a bare face has been deemed psychologically disturbing.  Mersault is a deviant who gazes at old pictures of faces he buys on the black market.  He also loves Simone, who reciprocates, but has less interest in fighting the system.  All Mersault wants is to see her face.  Face Machine, like Ambassador’s Day, has little use for plot.  Rather, like a majority of SF short films, it is interested in setting, characters, and a moment in time.  It doesn’t dwell on complicated events, caring almost exclusively on emotional impact.

It skips the often seen sandy backdrop in favor of the dystopian norm of Spartan rooms and corridors.  The future is bleak, with no space for individuality or hope.  The masks reinforce the hive state, both for the viewer and undoubtedly for anyone who would live in the film’s universe. 

Face Machine is one of the more powerful shorts on the circuit.  It’s about longing, loss, desire, hope, pain, and love, but what it says about those is up to the individual.

The most basic science fiction story, and the most common, isn’t about the loss of technology, but its advancement and what that means for individuals and society.  Cost of Living (10 min. Director/Writer: Jonathon Joffe) takes the closed room approach to tell a story of advanced technology.  All you see are the two men and a table.  The outside world is irrelevant.  An aging man (The X-File’s William B. Davis) is dying; he needs a new body to survive.  The salesman is more than happy to oblige.  However, the new synthetic models are expensive, and though the man is willing to pay everything he has, it isn’t enough.  The salesman is willing to cut him a deal.  You see, the man may own more than he realizes.  Like the previous films, Cost of Living asks a question without giving an answer, this time because the answer is personal.  What is it worth to you to continue to live?  This is a movie that will motivate conversations, and at ten minutes, it doesn’t wear out its welcome.  Sharp and involving, it is as good as any short film about people talking across a table is going to be.  There is a limiting factor with the concept.  Film is a dynamic art form, and sitting is rarely a bastion of vitality.

The Professor’s Daughter (17 min. Director/Writer: Luke Pebler) takes an alternative route in creating a good-looking movie about technology without spending buckets of cash; its world looks like ours.  The setting is now, or perhaps ten years ago.  Arthur is a divorced, absentminded professor who is having difficulties connecting with his rebellious daughter.  His work is going better, as he has just created the first self-aware artificial intelligence.  While his flesh and blood daughter shows him neither concern nor respect, his electronic one is doting.  But it isn’t a case of two girls with different attitudes.  As the newer one begins asking for more freedom, Arthur realizes that they are more alike than he could have imagined, and that, whatever the cost, he needs to let both think for themselves.

The Professor’s Daughter isn’t interested in technology or flash.  It is a quiet relationship drama that uses a computer as part of a metaphor about raising children, and in so doing, shows once again the strength of the genre.  Science fiction allows us to step away from a situation, viewing it in a new way that appears completely different at first.  We—and Arthur—can see the issues involved without the prejudices we all bring.  Don’t think this means that The Professor’s Daughter is a heavy-handed, scholarly piece.  It has more in common with The Twilight Zone than with an essay.
 
I’ve been discussing films that are excellent despite the handicap of the genre.  They’ve found ways to tell interesting and engaging science fiction stories while avoiding the need to craft expensive alien landscapes or futuristic cities.  However, the need for such serpentine approaches may be fading, and computers are responsible.  Just five years ago, a majority of the few spaceships that turned up in short films were practical models that demanded too much suspension of disbelief.  Any CGI ships were painful video game rejects.  Now, I’m seeing computer-created vessels that could be real and cost far less than developing film.  Soon, impressive sights will be easy to forge even on a minute budget, and with time, talent, and a few extra dollars, anything will be possible. 

D-I-M, Deus in Machina (29 min. Directors/Writers: Axel & Henning Ricke) is more than the herald of a new age of science fiction short filmmaking.  “Firsts” tend to be rough creations, the first halting steps.  D-I-M is the new wave perfected.  This German (yes, you have to read subtitles) cyberpunk thriller is jammed with shots of flying cars, robotic devices, and forbidding cityscapes, but it is not an effects extravaganza.  It’s about story, character, and theme.  It has simply transcended the limitations that have been inherent in bringing science fiction to the short format. 

Lutz is an anomaly in an oppressive state.  Each person’s life is only valued by what it is worth to society.  Social points determine a person’s job, possessions, and living arrangements.  Every citizen is constantly watched and evaluated by The Office of Social Surveillance and Statistics.  But Lutz is a dreamer who prefers watching old movies to fitting into society.  His only friend, Jannik, is a graduate from the horrendous virtual prison system.  Together, they plot to find a way out for Lutz.

D-I-M is everything cyberpunk should be and so seldom is on film.  Thoughtful, complicated, and entertaining, it presents a fully conceived world, but doesn’t bother to dwell on it.  This is Lutz’s tale, and we’re with him from beginning to end.  The acting is right on target, making our two heroes and the less amiable people they meet believable, for good or ill.  

D-I-M presents a possible future that isn’t just a repeat from previous cyberpunk stories.  It’s frightening, though the movie never bends under the weight of the dispiriting environment any more than it does from the demanding ideas.  This journey is fun to take.  The trailer is available online.

It’s far too much to claim that D-I-M, Deus in Machina will usher in a golden age for SF short film.  It’s easier to say that it is an impressive movie worth the time of any genre fan.