World According to Shorts

OFFScreen Presents
The World According to Shorts
Sunday, January 28th - 7 & 9:30 PM - 95 mins.
Six Directors - Six Countries, 2006

A fixture of the independent moviegoing circuit since 2000, the annual "The World According to Shorts" program has provided one of the few regular outlets for the commercially problematic short-film format. This year's Cinema Village program is something like a best-of, compiling six films from past incarnations and pointedly showcasing the scope and range of the series both geographical and formal. These six films are "provocative, mystifying, original, and, as if to prove the vitality of the short form, utterly unimaginable at feature length." (Joshua Land, Village Voice)

The Six films that make up this presentation are as follows:

La Perra
Hugo Maza, Chile, 17 min.
A couple with an empty life make up a story about the new maid in order to satisfy their sexual obsessions.

We Have Decided Not to Die
Daniel Askill, Australia, 11 min.
experimental. Three rituals. Three people. Three modern-day journeys of transcendence.

Ring of Fire
Andreas Hykade, Germany, 15 min, animated.
Replete with outrageous sexual imagery, this tale of innocence lost and ultimately redeemed is accompanied by a lyrical voiceover (in appropriate cowboy drawl) that seems to have only the loosest of connections to the action on-screen.

United We Stand
Hans Petter Moland, Norway, 9 min.
Eight old timers come upon a young woman stuck in a swamp. This short film was inspired by the Norway's Labour Party, and is a part of the collective feature film Utopia: No One is Perfect in the Perfect Country.

Antichrist
Adam Guzinski, Poland, 28 min.
A group of boys play in a barren, seemingly post-apocalyptic landscape. The group's leader believes he is the Antichrist. He goads the others into increasingly daring games until events spiral out of control.

The Old Woman's Step
Jane Malaquias, Brazil, 15 min.
An old lady travels from the fishermen's village where she lives to the city to sell a chicken so she can buy her grandson a present.

Check back in with further details about each of the shorts and they're creators.