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| Glasgow Short Film Festival 2015 opens with Vertical Cinema at The Briggait. Photo: Eoin Carey |
2015's Glasgow Short Film Festival got off to a strong start yesterday. While social media was buzzing about the vertical cinema event, the Eye For Film team were enjoying two incredibly strong programmes of short films which are hopefully indicative of the quality of this year's selection.
To answer a question posed by a lady in the audience, 'short films' are usually under an hour. That's pretty much the sole distinction. As a medium they're incredibly well supported by some national film institutes (particularly in Scandinavia - while set in the Rhone-Alps region, the production values of Lulu are totally those of Danish Film), and a tremendous shop window for talent. All manner of actors, directors and screen-writers have honed their skills in short film.
Among those is Andrei Tarkovsky, who makes an 'appearance' in this year's introductory film - made by the winners of last year's audience award, Cara Cunningham and Martin Clark - on one of the many pedestrian bridges over the M8 'Tarkovsky' talks of the fish that never swam, the bell that never rang, the "short film... that was too long." It's entertaining, well constructed, but it remains to be seen if, like last year's Top Gun substitution, it sees the award ceremony open with the trailer for The Steam-Roller And The Violin.
Short film has a great home in the GFT's Cinema 3 - renovated last year, it's small but perfectly formed. It's a little odd to be enjoying the Short Film Festival after the feature festival it usually precedes, but with treats like The Incredible Elastic Man and Lifestyle it's not hard to consider it dessert.
