My top 100 short films
Mostly avant-garde short films, with not that many narrative based ones. All under 60 minutes, though a few are a little featurey in flavour! All wondrous and close to my heart.
Hortillonnages, amiens (2015 - Jacques Perconte) would have been in position #90 but is not listed on IMDb. Although I try and get every favourite I have seen listed, this one does not appear to have been released in a cinema and so therefore does not qualify for an IMDb listing. Include that and it's technically a top 101!
Hortillonnages, amiens (2015 - Jacques Perconte) would have been in position #90 but is not listed on IMDb. Although I try and get every favourite I have seen listed, this one does not appear to have been released in a cinema and so therefore does not qualify for an IMDb listing. Include that and it's technically a top 101!
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100 titles
- DirectorMarguerite DurasStarsMarguerite DurasA short film Marguerite Duras which documents the Tuileries Gardens.
- DirectorLarry JordanAn experimental short from Larry Jordan in which a horse rider and gymnast are filmed.
- DirectorNathaniel Dorsky
- DirectorMaya DerenAlexander HammidStarsMaya DerenAlexander HammidA woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
- DirectorDick RickardStarsDon WilsonWalt DisneyMilt KahlFerdinand is a quiet, gentle bull who only wants to stop and smell the flowers. After he is stung by a bee, the townspeople believe he is ferocious and take him to the bullfight.
- DirectorJirí BartaStarsOldrich KaiserJirí LábusMichal PavlícekThe story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with a twist.
- DirectorOrson WellesStarsOrson WellesJeanne MoreauRoger CoggioIn Macao, a wealthy merchant named Charles Clay hires two people to recreate a story of a sailor who is paid to impregnate a man's wife.
- DirectorNathaniel DorskyThe experimental filmmaker reflects on the specific moods of the traditional rainy winter in his town of San Francisco, a period of darkness but also of verdant renewal.
- DirectorSteven ArnoldStarsRuth WeissAn experimental short film by Steven Arnold in which manikins in a department store come to life.
- DirectorLewis Klahr
- DirectorStephen QuayTimothy QuayStarsMagdalena CieleckaIn a technologically developed but feudal world beautiful Duenna is forced to choose between love and the task for which she was created.
- DirectorDeimantas NarkeviciusThe everyday scenes are of both the city and countryside, close-ups of people when they are relaxing, and hard at work, and of big crowds at an official outdoor gathering. The interior views are of private and public spaces. The images are suggestive of the ordering of the people's lives.
- DirectorKenneth AngerStarsKenneth AngerBobby BeausoleilDonald CammellEgyptian gods summons the angel Lucifer - in order to usher in a new occult age.
- DirectorNathaniel DorskyStarsNathaniel DorskyJerome HilerIt is a "silent tone poem" recording the daily events of Dorsky and his partner, artist Jerome Hiler around Lake Owassa in New Jersey and in Manhattan.
- DirectorAmir NaderiStarsSoheila AhmadiRasool ChamaniZohreh GhahremaniOne of Naderi's most beautiful films, a kind of magical realist parable that follows a boy's daily chore: bringing an elegant glass bowl to get filled with ice, and then returning home. The simplicity of this ritual stands in contrast to a world in which every glance and every gesture seems loaded with hidden meaning.
- DirectorAlexandre LaroseA dream-like walk through nature. A little girl in red, a dock, a lake.
- DirectorAdolfo ArrietaStarsAnne WiazemskyAdolfo ArrietaXavier GrandèsIn the Monkey Island, populated by men and frog women, spies covet sacred frogs.
- DirectorDave FleischerMyron WaldmanStarsJack MercerA short film about a mother and her son, she teaches him life skills later on the son gets niked by a man so the young donkey can be his work slave and his mother saves him.
- DirectorTom PalazzoloA "tour de force" of late 1960s civic and political countercultures, Love It/Leave It juxtaposes the annual Naked City contest in Roselawn, Indiana, neighborhood characters, and American consumerism with the foment of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago (replete with cameos by William S. Burroughs, Mayor Richard J. Daley, and Allen Ginsberg). The film reaches a crescendo with the insistent refrain of the Vietnam-era expression "love it or leave it."
- DirectorDon HertzfeldtStarsJulia PottWinona MaeSara CushmanA little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future.
- DirectorBill ViolaWith a title referring to Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of a new year are significant, the film - an ardent dream entirely shot in Japan - stands as a spiritual allegory equating light and dark with life and death.
- DirectorVladimir TarasovStarsAleksandr KaydanovskiyVasiliy LivanovAleksandr PashutinPeople survive on an alien planet in the hope of returning to Earth. Fantastic cartoon based on Kir Bulychyov's novel.
- DirectorLewis KlahrLewis Klahr's first film in 16mm, THE PHARAOH'S BELT was given a special citation for experimental film by the National Society of Film Critics in 1994.
- DirectorJirí TrnkaStarsOtýlie BenískováJana WerichováTrnka's sci-fi vision of the future in which machines and robots try to substitute themselves into the most beautiful human relationships. A cybernetic robot is supposed to substitute for the loving grandmother of a little girl. The wise grandmother, however, comes back and the girl finds the warmth of her grandmother's loving arms again. Trnka's artistic ideas in this film can be described as both poetically fragile and dramatically cautionary.
- DirectorJohn ParkerBruno VeSotaStarsAdrienne BarrettBruno VeSotaBen RosemanThis film, with no dialogue at all, follows a psychotic young woman's nightmarish experiences through one skid-row night.