This year, Canadian short filmmakers threw caution to the wind. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing all the short films selected by the Vancouver International Film Festival in the Canadian Images program; some of my favourites included the social realist gaze of Star (dir. Emilie Mannering), the hilarious seventh-grade feminists in My Favourite Season (dir. Liz Cairns), and the playful portraits of Calendar Girls (dir. Lisa Birke).
Before the final shorts program premiere last week, I sat down in the lounge of the Vancity Theatre with Curtis Woloschuk, VIFF Canadian Images Shorts programmer, to ask him about what trends he noticed in 2015 shorts. “I think that, on average, things seem a little bit longer. And there’s a bit more of a freedom to the films, maybe not as much concern for traditional structure,” Woloschuk noted. “There’s a sense of ideas being pursued or tested, and it doesn’t always resolve itself in the manner that one might expect. Because of that, I think they tend to linger a little longer.”
Just shy of the 20-minute mark, one stand-out was the chilled embrace of Never Steady, Never Still. This short and soon-to-be feature sees a young man returning from the rigs to his mother’s rural home, and offers a complex and considerate portrait of fragility. Directed by Kathleen Hepburn, Never Steady, Never Still was awarded Most Promising Director of a Canadian Short Film and is also one of the many shorts at VIFF made by SFU alumni.
Woloschuk named a film directed by current SFU students Jessica Johnson and Ryan Ermacora as one of his favourites: “I think that Ocean Falls is a really special film. The feel of that film, both in terms of the aesthetic and the more formal qualities. It just takes you to a place, in a lot of ways. It’s such an immersive film.” Woloschuk is clearly a fan of the work coming out of SFU, as he regularly attends the fourth-year film screenings at the School for the Contemporary Arts.
“I think seeing the grad screenings at SFU, there’s obviously a freedom that is encouraged there,” Woloschuk continues. “I think that lends itself to some of those qualities that I was talking about, even in the submissions from elsewhere in the program, a sense of curiosity and exploration — there’s a restlessness to a lot of the films. There’s a certain compelling anxiety to them. A need to seek something out. And I think that’s what I see in the SFU films.”
It seems that SFU’s alumni have tapped into the ever-changing landscape of successful short filmmaking. “I would like to see more films that embrace a freedom,” says Woloschuk. “When looking at other festival programs, some of those films are very solid, very defined things. But I think there are also those films that allow themselves that room to breathe, and you have the potential to revisit them and they’d appear quite different — almost amorphous in some way.
“They’re open, and because of that they encourage an openness in the viewer as well, and so you can meet them on different terms.”
