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June 8 - June 15,2003 |
When being short is a good thing
Quirky and excellent Italian presence at ninth annual Worldwide Film Festival in Toronto
By Angela Baldassarre
Originally Published: 2003-06-01
Festival, festivals and always more festivals. The months of May and June are literally hotbeds in Toronto for specialized film fests such as Hot Docs, Jewish, Inside/Out, and Images. But what's more remarkable is that there's an inexhaustible movie audience out there that just doesn't seem to tire of them.
Ending the season - giving us aficionados and professionals alike a needed break until the Toronto International Film Festival takes place in September - is the ninth Annual Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival. Acquired by Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Center three years ago, and successful beyond anybody's expectations, the fest has become one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world, this year boasting more than 200 films from over 54 countries divided into several programmes.
Two Italian entries are in the International Competition. Screened in the You & Me Against the World programme is Mario Amura's Wartale (Racconto di Guerra), 19-minute harrowing tale about homeless children in 1993 war-torn Sarajevo forced to rob homes in order to survive. Other films in the programme include the animated Rocks, about humans' toll on the environment; David Waingarten's Post, a haunting tale about a child remembering the abduction of her best friend; Sam Chen's excellent Eternal Gaze, an animated tribute to late Italian sculptor Alberto Giacometti; Toni Bestard's funny The Trip, about two kids who stumble upon a body and theorize on what happened to him; Norah McGettigan's entertaining The Water Fight, about siblings hanging out at seaside resort; Jeroen Annokkee's Roadkill, about a Landrover that encounters a pesky duck; and Terje Rangnes' Save the Children, from Norway.
Paolo Ameli's gorgeous Mud Red (Rosso Fango) is screened in the Cult of Personality programme, and details the terrifying true story about a British soldier on the battlefield with a German one and how his split-second decision altered the world's destiny. Just wonderful. Other films in the programme include Brian Kelly's hilarious Billy Bongo, about a young man who leaves his small Scottish town for an unusual sports competition; David Russo's eerie Pan With Us, featuring Robert Frost's poem "Pan"; the interesting Howard Hawks, San Sebastian 1972 documentary; Gonzalo Zona's The Scarecrow; Stephane Elmadjian's fast-paced Freedub 1; Camille Griffin's longwinded A Weekend with Eva; and Alexandre Astier's French-language Dies Irae.
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