Please note that this is not a final list and does not reflect the order of screenings. Please check back for schedule confirmations.
Narrative Shorts
Free Delivery , World Premier
Directed by Alexander Minas, 7 min
A bored young woman sits at home and watches TV. After flipping through channels, she watches a news cast about two missing young men last seen at their jobs delivering pizza. After dismissing an odd noise in her house, she decides to grab a soda from her stock in the garage. In that very garage, there lies the bloody mess that is pizza, boxes, and two young men. After running into the house and withdrawing a knife from the kitchen, she discovers an intruder. They struggle, each fighting for their lives. Who will walk away in the end?
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Alexander Roberto Minas, a 24-year-old Mexican-Armenian resident of Sacramento, California, first expressed interest in film at an early age when asking questions such as “how does the camera do that?”, “what’s a camera trick?” and “that monster isn’t real?”. While growing up in Sacramento, it never occurred to him that he can make a career out of these concepts. Yet after taking a very basic film theory class in his last year of high school, he was hooked. It was not long after that he transferred to San Francisco State University from CSU Sacramento where he went on to take film production and theory classes, declaring himself as a Cinema Major. There he studied under film veteran Jameson Goldner and independent film producer Stephen Ujlaki. It was also there where Minas experimented with various forms of film and became actively involved with student projects working in front and behind the camera. In a 16mm film production class, Minas directed his very first student short film called “The Mad Java Party”, a take on the “Mad Tea Party” concept from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”. It involved a college girl dreaming about running late to her final exam but mixing her priorities by trying to get coffee at the same time. Admist a busy college campus, the girl sits with two drag queens who seem to have an abundance of coffee. They do nothing to make her situation easier by preventing her from enjoying the hot java and making her late for her finals. As a final project in his senior year, Minas adapted and directed a short excerpt from Steven Spielberg’s “Poltergeist”, using professional actors from a bay area film network, the on-campus soundstage, and a crew of several talented and eager film students. The objective of the semester-long project was for students to pick an excerpt of any screenplay and adapt it to his or her own individual directorial vision. This was the also the project when he first collaborated with his musician father, Phil Minas, for sound mixing and scoring. In 2005, Minas accomplished his Bachelor of Arts degree in Cinema from San Francisco State University. Since then, Minas has been involved in short film competitions such as the 72 hour film competition hosted by the Asian American Film Lab and Asian CineVision, working as an assistant director to the short film “Disorder”, a production that Minas collaborated with an Asian American independent film and theater company called “Zeitgeist Artworks”. The film displayed a love story that involved two young adults with obsessive compulsive disorder. Presently, Minas has begun a small film production company called “Cautionary Productions” in which he has produced and directed his own first short as an amateur filmmaker entitled “Free Delivery”. It is a short horror/suspense film involving a girl, pizza guys, and bloody death. His next projects will include another horror/suspense short about nightmares and a feature documentary on the ex-owner of the iconic Tower Records. Minas currently resides in Sacramento, CA.
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Three-Fifty
Directed by Maurice Chauvet, 9min
When a man tries to weasel his way out of his late fees at his local video store, the clerk and the manager have some surprises for him. Their database has access to what seems like all of the truth in the universe - with video and photos of intimate details of the customer’s past - and his future. ’screechingly funny’ - ‘especially hilarious’.
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Maurice Chauvet wrote Owning Mahowny (Sony Classics, 2003), for which he received a Genie Award nomination for best adapted screenplay. Other film work includes the upcoming Charity Case (Thousand Words), Mighty Mouse (Nickelodeon/Paramount) and The Bride Wore Black (20th Century Fox).
Also a playwright, his 2004 play “A Safe Distance” was an L.A Stage Alliance Ovation Award nominee for best world premiere play.
Other produced plays include Ascension, “Three-Fifty”, “Sunday Morning”, “Suicide Sam”, “All Night Radio”, “Bobby Zero”, “The Chess Game” and “Wild Kingdom”. On stage, he directed
Jeanne Dorsey’s “The Longbottom Way” and his own “Three-Fifty”.
As a writer-director, he made the short video pieces, Dare and God is Dead and now “$3.50″ the film. Maurice is a founding member of the Venice, CA-based theater group Apartment A and is the company’s Co-Artistic Director.
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THE HOUSE
Directed by Douglas Elford-Argent, 8min
A brother and sister burglarize a house and discover the body of a man. They are arrested and interrogated separately by a detective investigating the crime. Young, smart and cocky, the siblings tell different stories, leading the detective to his own conclusions. Is there more to their story? Or are they really just unlucky enough to stumble upon a body in the house they were robbing?
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Douglas Elford-Argent started shooting short film at the early age of 11, working his way up to low budget features in 2001 where he shot ‘The Fast Life’. Currently Douglas is working on a new feature entitled ‘25 Percent’ for which he is looking for funding. “I have grown as a director’ Douglas says ‘Each film gives me a new angle and experience for the next’.
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my name is Lisa
Directed by Ben Shelton, 7min
13 year old Lisa learns to deal with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. As Lisa’s mother becomes more sick, Lisa grows more frustrated, but eventually more responsible.
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Biography not available.
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The Road
Directed by Owen Thomas, 5min
Karma, condensed. A group of seemingly random people help Karma along, passing through many hands. A five minute short starring Christopher Michael Holley, Danton Mew, Ariele Senara, Virginia Buckner, Matt Buckner, Owen Thomas, Kimberly Chong, and Yvonne Koenig. Directed by Owen Thomas.
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Owen Thomas is a bay area native who got his start performing with the San Francisco Boys Chorus at the age of 6. After finishing school, and working as a musician for many years, Owen took a slight detour into, and then out of graduate school. Soon after discovering voiceover, Owen eventually began working as an actor, which lead to his writing and directing, “The Road” with Theoretical Films. Owen currently lives in his hometown of Berkeley, California.
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Anjali
Directed by Maya Anand, 15min 
‘Anjali’ is a drama about Anjali Gupal, a rebellious Indian-American teenager whose family struggles daily to accommodate both their traditional Indian values alongside more contemporary American concerns. When Anjali brings her boyfriend home to have sex, she is surprised to find someone else is already there. Anjali investigates, only to secretly witness her father with another woman. Faced with this devastating information, Anjali must decide whether she will share her secret, and risk destroying the family her mother has so earnestly committed herself to. Finally, Anjali must bring herself to begin to see her parents as the flawed adults they really are.
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Maya Anand was born and raised in New York. After receiving her B.A. in English from Harvard University in 2003, Maya remained in Cambridge, Massachusetts to study filmmaking with director Hal Hartley. In 2004 she returned to New York and worked for producer Robert Greenhut on several feature films in New York, including Sidney Lumet’s “Find Me Guilty” and Kirsten Sheridan’s “August Rush.” Maya is a recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Student Development Award and the 2007 Academy Internship Program Fellowship. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. at the Film Division of the Columbia School of the Arts.
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GODSPEED
Directed by Lynn Breedlove and Jen Gilomen, 17min
A speed freak bike messenger who passes as a boy fights the world and his own lust for thrills to win the love of a stripper, and finds his heart on the way.
It’s a universal tale of love, addiction, and redemption in SF’s cool punk late 80’s, when every club on Valencia blasted a local band, everyone wore black, bike messengers were the new pony express, and strippers, their saloon girls.
Lynnee Breedlove co-directs with Jen Gilomen, produces with Kami Chisholm, and acts with Adroc of the Beastie Boys.
Music by Katastrophe, The Gossip, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, Lunachicks, All The Pretty Horses, Blatz, Dirtbox, Tribe 8, and more.
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Lynn Breedlove will star as the lead talent for Godspeed, Jim. As an author, comic, and the lead singer of Tribe8, Breedlove has toured with spoken word, music and multimedia shows, collaborating across lines of race, age and gender.
Breedlove has been dedicated to creating women’s, trans, and queer art programs internationally for the last 15 years. He has taken this performance art to the cinema screen in Rise Above: The Tribe 8 Documentary (2003), the feature By Hook or By Crook (2004), the documentary Wrong Bathroom (2005), and in numerous documentaries about the communities of women and queers in rock. In the 90s Breedlove founded Lickety Split All Girl Courier, toured with Sister Spit, and wrote Godspeed, the autobiographical novel (St. Martins Press, 2002. He is now touring his One Freak Show in the US and Europe in five languages, a solo comedy show about trans identities and the LGBTIQQ community.
Co-Director – Jen Gilomen
Jen Gilomen is a media producer and instructor at the Bay Area Video Coalition, where she manages a program called the Digital Storytelling Institute, helping California-based nonprofits use technology to tell stories for social change. Jen’s documentary In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents (director, 31min, 2005) won the Audience Award for Best Short at the 2005 Frameline Film Festival, and went on to screen at several other festivals across the U.S. Her other documentaries and short narrative works have screened in various festivals in the U.S., France, Italy, England, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and New Zealand. In addition to editing Godspeed and a short documentary about Paraguay, she’s currently writing a feature screenplay called Sunlight in a Dark Room, which she plans to produce in mid-2007.
Missing Pieces
Directed by Tony Swarthout
Love, lost and found. A series of strange events is explained when a beautiful woman shows up on a man’s doorstep.
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Bio not available.
Viola
Directed by Shih-Ting Hung
It is an ordinary day in an old classroom on the Pacific coast. Seven years old, Viola tries to grow up.She feels like a giant, a tiny giant.Lumbering. Isolated.She wonders if there are others like her.
She makes her way, and her first steps wobble like new shoots in the spring rain.
On too small shoes, teetering. Harlequins somersaulting on the wings of moths,
Disturbing the dust in the empty audience seats,Through invisible boxes and costumes and acrobats in knots,On a stumble on slippery moss at the 4 o’clock bus stop.
A thousand, thousand people on paths that never touch.Until she meets another giant….
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Food Fight
Directed by Megan Stacy
Food Fight tells the story of a schizophrenic girl who’s hallucinations reflect the war images she sees on the news. Inspired by the surreal shorts of Czech film maker Jan Svankmajer, Megan Stacey chose to create a piece involving stop motion animation to convey a deeper message of war and the influence of the media.
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Middle school was the first time I ever touched a video camera, or at least got to use one. Since then I’ve grown exponentially as a person and a film maker. Now a senior at Franklin High School in Elk Grove, California, I am trying to learn as much as I can before I leave for college. Mainly I believe that I grow from hands on experience. Its seems every time I complete a new film, a new concept or idea is revealed to me. Not to mention the fact that I am quite easily inspired. I draw on the people and things around me for ideas: being a soccer player and a runner, my family, my friends, music and other movies and directors. I hope to one day have the skill to move on to bigger things and hopefully my film making talents will carry me to where I want to go.
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Undocumented
Directed by Joel Rodriguez
An Illegal immigrant and his family are getting ready to celebrate their daughter fifteens party, but will their plans be ruined?
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Sugar
Directed by Alex Beh
The imagination of waiter runs wild when a beautiful patron asks him for sugar in her coffee.
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Raised in Winnetka by a drama teacher and a Chicago Board of Trader. He learned acting and improvisation at The Second City, Improv Olympic, University of Kentucky, Acting Studio Chicago, Piven Theatre, and being around his mother. His Directing education came out of necessity and he loves it.
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Magritte Moment
Directed by Ian Fischer
A frustrated painter searching for his muse gets some help from the surreal visions of Rene Magritte.
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Ian Fischer graduated with a BA from Tufts University. He received his MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University. He was a Story Analyst for October Films and their genre subdivision Rogue. He also worked at Miramax and TWI. In addition to working in Film and Television, he worked for Internet entertainment companies Pseudo and Urban Box Office as a screenwriter and director.
He directed Man on Earth’s music video for “Hold Your Breath and Wait for the Crash” and The 253 Boys’ music video for “New Day! No War!” He also produced/directed/edited the “Lightride” corporate video for Hong Kong LED manufacturer Cotco and the Behind the Scene’s videos for the independent features Rock The Paint and Day Zero.
His short film “Foet” has played in 21 film festivals, such as Cannes, New York City Horror Film Festival, Boston Underground, and Tromadance. His short film, “Magritte Moment,” premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival. He is in post production on his latest short film “the Wonder of See-Saws,” which will be included in the feature length Wonder feature film and in pre-production for a feature documentary on a comic book artist.
He currently works as a freelance producer/director and film instructor in New York City.
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Rabia
Directed by Muhammad Ali Hasan
Rabia is a woman who must blow herself up in order to exist. From the moment she straps explosives to her bare body, we are exposed to flashbacks of Rabia’s past, filled with abuse, rejection, and struggle. By the time she steps onto a popular Israeli beach, awaiting to kill hundreds of innocent civilians in a massive explosion, we find ourselves asking whether Rabia’s act is one of evil or one of heroism?
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3Muhammad Ali Hasan received his MFA in Film Directing from Chapman University in 2007. He currently serves as a political commentator for Fox News, MSNBC, and BBC Radio, and is a former regular guest of Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, as well as the Dennis Miller Show of CNBC. In 2005, Muhammad co-founded the Muslims For America Think Tank, a political organization that provides policy recommendations to American politicians on issues dealing with the War On Terror.
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Documentary Shorts
Loss
Directed by Kristen Nutile, 19min
Interweaving 8mm home movies, contemporary film footage, photographs, interviews and audio recordings, LOSS explores faded memories and long-term grief. The film unravels through a personal narrative, which centers around the loss of my father to a brain tumor over 17 years ago.
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Kristen Nutile is an independent documentary filmmaker and editor based in New York City. She recently collaborated with Albert Maysles and Tanja Meding on SALLLY GROSS - THE PLEASURE OF STILLNESS, a documentary about the critically acclaimed New York-based dancer and choreographer Sally Gross, which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival. In addition, Kristen has produced, directed and edited eight documentary shorts, which have shown all over the world including the Sundance Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival. She is the 2006 recipient of the Albert Maysles Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking and has received grants from both NYSCA and the Jerome Foundation. She holds Master’s degrees in both Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University and Biology from San Francisco State University.
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Alone, Together
Directed by Krystalline Armendariz, Roan Bibby, Eric Fischer, Dan Lewis, 9min
What can a video game teach us about personal relationships? Do online quests to kill goblins, murlocs and blood elves help hone parenting skills? Should online game addiction be a classified medical condition? Alone, Together explores character relationships surrounding the online game World of Warcraft.
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On the Assassination of the President
Directed by Adam Keker, 6min
This top-secret government file, only to be viewed in the event of the President’s death by assassination, gives specific instructions on what should be done, and provides dossiers on the three most likely suspects.
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Adam Keker is a filmmaker and writer based in San Francisco. As a cinematographer, he has photographed documentaries for PBS, National Geographic, IFC, A&E, The Discovery Channel, and many others. As a writer, he works as a script doctor and is in progress on two books: a travel guide to a fictitious city, and a monograph about a fictitious artist. His previous short film, THE ARCHITECT, about coal miners in Ukraine, screened in more than 50 cities in ten countries and received several awards, including a Golden Gate Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival. With his wife, journalist Amanda Pike, he is currently directing a feature-length documentary about the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia.
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South Central Farm: Oasis in a Concrete Desert
Directed by Sheila Laffey, 24min
This short doc tells the true story of the high profile controversy involving poor farmers and their supporters, including celebrity tree sitters, the developer and the city over the South Central Farm in Los Angeles which was the largest urban farm in the U.S. and fed 350 families before it was bulldozed.
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Sheila is an award winning producer of documentaries and short dramatic films, mostly on the environment. Her latest release is SOUTH
CENTRAL FARM: OASIS IN A CONCRETE DESERT which premiered at AFI Fest, screened at Palisades Film Fest and and is airing in the PBS “Natural Heroes” series. She co-directed and co-produced the feature
documentary on mentoring, SHOW ME THE WAY with Oscar nominated William Gazecki which is to be released in 2008.
Her films in THE LAST STAND series on the Ballona Wetlands controversy, hosted by Ed Asner, won 20 awards, including a Cine Golden Eagle, and Best Documentary at several festivals. The 2004
version won a Telly Award for the 13 part “NATURAL HEROES” PBS series in which it aired.
Laffey’s other award winning works include WE ALL NEED THE FOREST and IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEA, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. HAWAII IN TRANSITION: VISION FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE aired on over 20 PBS stations and is distributed by the Video Project. She was a co-producer of GEO-THERMAL: A RISKY BUSINESS IN HAWAII’S WAO KELE O PUNA RAINFOREST which helped save the last lowland tropical forest in the country. She produced her first film, WALDEN in college.
Laffey is Adjunct Film Professor at Santa Monica College. She earned a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University. Her new course, Green Screen: Films on the Environment and Transformation, will begin in Fall, 2008.
Geoffrey Pepos (Producer/Editor) is a Sundance dramatic competition alumnus (2001), where he was producer, editor, composer, and director of photography for the grand jury prize nominated feature film, “Some Body.” His most recent project was as a producer and the editor for the PBS documentary, “South Central Farm: Oasis in a Concrete desert.”
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The Cock: Lesbian Owned & Operated, World Premier
Directed by Luna Han, 10min
This short film documents the colorful and heartfelt journey of a first-time small business owner from Jalisco, Mexico to Oakland, California, where she now owns and operates a successful restaurant called the Cock-a-Doodle Cafe (affectionately known as “The Cock”).
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Luna Han is a writer, visual artist, filmmaker, and editor based in Oakland, California. “The Cock: Lesbian Owned and Operated” was inspired by the owner of the Cock-a-Doodle Cafe, Blanca Arechiga, and her partner, Ana Trujillo. The film reflects her process of getting to know them and learning about the passion, sacrifices, and triumphs behind their decision to give birth to and nurture a new business while tending to their families and their own relationship as lovers and partners.
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Burninman: Voyage in Utopia
Directed by Laurent Le Gall,
Every year, tens of thousands of participants migrate to the vacant heart of the wild west to celebrate this stupefying event by creating an ephemeral town, Black Rock City.
The Black rock desert, Nevada State, will be the decor of the festival. Without a doubt the experience will be extreme in this lost world. huge heat, desert storms, no shade, no shops. Everybody must survive by themselves by bringing their own food and hopefully their good spirit.
These “burners” mix their urban culture with a certain type of improvised tribalism.
According to Larry Harvey, the principals are simple. Radical self expression and creation are absolute.
No money here. All is based on a gift economy! At Burning Man you will not find any fast food or advertising for beer.
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The purpose of this documentary, through our extraordinary voyage, is to analyse the conventions, commitments and syndromes of this event became a mouvement. Burning Man is a schizophrenic testimony of an american society where liberty, tolerance and individualism often live side by side with competition, totalitarianism and commodification. It will illuminate for us the hidden face of “the man who burns”.
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Animation
24 Frames
Directed by Brad Puttulo, 19min
24 Frames is a stop-motion animated black comedy mockumentary about a stop-motion animated film production at an art college in the southern U.S. The crew, which consists mainly of ambitious animation students, aspires to adapt a children’s book into an animated film to impress the school’s president, who also happens to be the director’s mother-in-law. Incompetence, artistic differences, and a series of grisly mishaps soon cause the production to spiral out of control as the would-be filmmakers struggle to finish the project.
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Brad Pattullo was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan and has been doing freelance illustration since middle school. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1995, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2002. His first job in animation was working for Will Vinton Studios on the critically acclaimed but short-lived “Gary and Mike” television series, where he quickly rose from the status of rookie animator to one of the most valued members of the production team. He has since worked on several animated television programs, including “The PJs”, “Celebrity Deathmatch”, “Phantom Investigators”, and “A Little Curious”, as well as several commercial and music video projects. His independent films have been screened in such venues as Sundance Film Festival, Kalamazoo Animation Festival International, Siggraph’s Electronic Theater, Brooklyn Internation Film Festival, Tehran International Film Festival, and the G4 television network.
Brad is beginning his fourth year as an instructor, and his first year as the Cinema Area chair in the Art Department of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, a well-known and well-respected animation program. Previously, he taught for two years in the Department of Animation and Digital Media at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. He was also a special topics instructor in the Continuing Education program at CCS and continues to teach workshops and special programs relating to film, animation, and drawing throughout Pennsylvania and the Midwest.
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When the World Goes Dark
Directed by Anthony Scalmato, 7min
In the underworld of the New York City Subway system, one man struggles with madness for a chance at love. Presented as a disjointed sequence of fantasies ‘When the World Goes Dark’ is a chilling reminder that the everyday and commonplace can be as grotesque as it is absurd. In the end, only one certainty remains: this macabre delusion is not only on screen, but within our own minds.
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Anthony Scalmato recently graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art and currently works for American Greetings. His animated eCards have been purchased by the likes of Disney, Sony and Walmart, as well as other Fortune 500 companies. “When the World Goes Dark,” Anthony’s first animated short film, has screened in dozens of festivals worldwide, winning awards and garnering critical acclaim. Anthony continues to work with film, commercial and animation in new and innovative ways. His work can be found at :
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LITHIUM
Directed by Kevin Barlow, 3min
Genetic Scientists working for the Helix Corporation combine the metal lithium with human DNA to create an indestructible superhuman creature to use in its ongoing world conquest.
This creature’s name is Lithium.
His first mission in Fusion City is to track down an experimental abomination: Razor, who escaped from the Helix Advanced Biofusion Labs.
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Kevin Barlow was born in Vietnam in 1970 the son of an American Naval Officer Jerry Allen Barlow and Vietnamese immigrant Thom Thi Barlow. He grew up in the Midwest and started drawing cartoons at the age of 3. By the age of 8 he had already created dozens of original cartoon characters. His first published work was at the age of 10. He wrote and drew his own comic book series published in fanzines at the age of 14. He attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and received a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in Illustration.
He has worked in Interactive Design and Motion Graphics for over ten years. He worked for Microsoft and some of the top Ad Agencies in Minneapolis. He started his own Graphic Design company called FUSION Animation. His company does award winning work in all areas of Graphic Design, Web, Interactive Media, Motion Graphics, DVD and Animation.
Lithium is based on characters that Kevin had started painting and drawing 15 years ago when he was in college. About 3 years ago, he enlisted the help of some 3D Animators to make the 3 minute short film “Lithium”. Working on their “free time” evenings and weekends, the team modeled an entire city and vehicles for the short. Rendered on only 4 home computers. The project took over 2 years to complete. Lithium is a Feature/TVseries and Videogame pitch.
LITHIUM has been accepted as an Official Selection into the following Film Festivals:
California International Animation Festival: Winning the award for Best Animation “Short film most likely to land a Feature or TV Series deal.” Screened Oct. 5th.
LA Shorts Fest: Screened Sept. 12th in Burbank, CA.
ShockerFest: Screened Oct. 7th in Modesto, CA.
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RED PRINCESS BLUES: The Book of Violence
Directed by Dan Cregan, 8min
In this tale we meet her as a 12 year old little girl who finds herself in a strange country looking for her father. She is then taken in by a “unique” looking man who goes by Nino. The short film is completely from the perspective of Princess and what she is going through. She soon discovers the “Book of Violence” and slowly begins her journey that one day will lead to vengeance.
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An absolute movie addict, Dan Cregan decided after getting a degree in graphic design to return to school and get his masters degree in computer animation. Currently he works as the creative director for the award winning visual effects house Numb Robot (
www.numbrobot.com ). Dan recently made his professional directorial debut with Red Princess Blues Animated: The Book of Violence starring actress Paula Garces.
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Papiroflexia
Directed by Joaquin Baldwin, 3min
Papiroflexia (Spanish for “Origami”) is the animated tale of Fred, a skillful paper folder who could shape the world with his hands.
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Originally created as a poem by the director, it was turned into a short animated film created in the UCLA Animation Workshop.
Joaquin Baldwin is an animator and website designer from Paraguay, with a BFA in animation and working on an MFA in animation at UCLA. He has been granted several awards including the Jack Kent Cooke full Graduate Scholarship in 2006.
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Invisible Croissants
Directed by Andy Windak
A dream-like world explored through the chasing of an ice cream truck with a mixed media animation approach. Fully animated using stop motion and extensive digital compositing with photo collage backgrounds.
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Sebastian’s Voodoo
Directed by Joaquin Baldwin
A voodoo doll must find the courage to save his friends from being pinned to death.
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Joaquin Baldwin is an animator and website
designer from Paraguay, with a BFA in animation and working on an MFA in animation at UCLA. He has been granted several awards including the Jack Kent Cooke full Graduate Scholarship in 2006.
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Circle Maker
Directed by Jesse Davis
Bring your daughter to work day! It’s finally time to show
Wendy what ‘father’ does all night long. But being a typical kid, Wendy’s interests only arise when her childhood curiosity kicks in. Although happy she’s enthused, ‘father’ is ill-prepared for the meddling mind of his daughter.
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Jesse was born in Connecticut, growing up on acting, musical theater, and music performance. However, he was always fascinated by cartoons and video games, begging his friends to let him play theirs. In 2002 he graduated High School and moved to California to attend UC Davis to study music and eventually find a passion in art and animation. He graduated with a double bachelors in Music and Art Studio. After completing University, he moved in 2007 to Vancouver, until July 2008 where he took part in the 3D animation and Visual Effects program, obtaining a degree in the animation stream. He believe he has found a true calling that encompasses all his achievements and passions thus far and is very thankful to be doing what he does.
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Love on the Line
Directed by Melissa Graziano
A combination of stop-motion cutouts and computer animation, Love on the Line is about two mid-Victorian teenage sweethearts sneaking onto their parents’ telegraph machines to chat.
Phineas, a sixteen-year-old rapscallion with a healthy appetite for ‘the fairer sex’, sneaks into his train manager father’s telegraph office to contact his long-distance girlfriend, Elizabeth. Prim and proper (albeit curious) Elizabeth nervously answers her beau’s call. Having not seen each other for quite some time, the conversation turns a tad racy….
Love on the Line would play like a silent film if not for the song-plugging stylings of Joseph Trapanese and his original Ragtime score.
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Melissa Graziano is currently a third-year MFA Animation student at UCLA. She made Love on the Line while in her second year at the UCLA Animation Workshop, during which she won the coveted Dan McLaughlin Award for Best Animated Film for 2008. Her first film, Because You’re Beautiful, is currently being used for promotional purposes by Girls Speak Out!, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to helping girls “express their true selves and build girls’ strengths and power as leaders”.
Melissa has always loved to tell stories, whether it be in her writing, in her visual art, or in her films. While a visiting student at the University of Central Lancashire as an undergraduate, Melissa started experimenting with different media in animation. She enjoys telling stories in the traditional sense, but using materials and technology in ways that not only make audiences wonder, “How did they do that?” but which also enhance the story. She aspires to become a Feature Animation Director at a major animation studio after a stint at Storyboarding. Originally a New England girl, she now resides in Los Angeles.
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HD Shorts
Betrothed
Directed by Emily Sheskin, 18min
What happens after you say ‘Yes’ to the marriage proposal? For Madeline, a woman who has poured time and love into her work life, saying yes to a personal life seems to be harder than she could imagine. While she loves her boyfriend, she worries that the expectations her finance has for her are not what she wants. Betrothed takes a good look at the modern day woman in the modern day relationship and asks are we worrying for nothing? Are our parent’s ideals ingrained in the back of our minds? As a woman, can you have the career and the home life without sacrificing something? Told through animation and live action, Betrothed takes us into our own heads, along with Madeline’s.
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Emily Sheskin is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for Film and Television. She has worked professionally in the industry as a motion graphics designer for CBS/CSTV and currently works as an edit assist. She constantly takes on freelance directing, editing and design jobs, and most recently directed a music video for The Hanslick Rebellion which was featured in SPIN magazine.
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Happily Ever After
Directed by Lidia Sheinin, 4min 14sec
Did you ever wonder what happens when the last page is turned? ‘Happily Ever After’ allows you to find out by pushing the boundaries of traditional cinematographic storytelling. It’s warm and beautiful,
and yet in a most innovative and lighthearted way it’s asking us to think, and think hard.
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Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Lidia Sheinin always dreamed of being a theatre director. After moving to the United States in 2002 and realizing that California is sorely lacking in the theatre department, she turned to filmmaking. “Happily Ever After” is the first film ever to be made by her.
Lidia holds masters degree in Psychology, though she often ditched her classes to hang around the famous Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. As a result her knowledge of both human nature and art is fragmentary and unsatisfactory.
The optimism and cheerful disposition inherited from the rich cultural tradition of classic Russian writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky comes through in her work.
Currently Lidia resides in San Diego and commutes to LA to take film courses at UCLA. She believes that as a result her directing (and driving) skills have improved greatly and is hoping to make a lot of new little depressing films.
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STRUCK
Directed by Taron Lexton, 7min
On his way to work one day, Joel (Bodhi Elfman) is impaled through the chest by a three-foot arrow. But it doesn’t harm him. And it won’t come out. So Joel has to learn to deal – both with his newfound protrusion, and his own painful loneliness. He tries to go to work, to date women, but no one seems ready to accept his strange flaw. Little does he know, his life is about to change forever…
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South African-born Lexton has directed dozens of award-winning ads and short films. His work has been featured on MTV, Fox, and the Discovery Channel, and has aired to over 600 million people.
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kids + money
Directed by Lauren Greenfield, 32min
Money talks. Teens in Los Angeles discuss money: getting it, spending it and learning to live without it.
An original short film by award-winning filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield, kids + money is a conversation with young people from diverse Los Angeles communities about the role of money in their lives. From rich to poor, Pacific Palisades to East L.A., kids address how they are shaped by a culture of consumerism.
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Acclaimed photographer Lauren Greenfield is considered a preeminent chronicler of youth culture as a result of her groundbreaking projects Girl Culture and Fast Forward. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are in many museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the International Center of Photography. She was named by American Photo as one of the 25 most influential photographers working today.
Greenfield’s first feature-length documentary film, THIN, aired on HBO, and is accompanied by a photography book of the same name (Chronicle Books, 2006). In this unflinching and incisive study, Greenfield embarks on an emotional journey through the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, Florida, a residential facility dedicated to the treatment of eating disorders. The feature-length documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Direction in 2007. It won the Grierson Award for best documentary at the London Film Festival, and Grand Jury Prizes at the Independent Film Festival of Boston, the Newport International Film Festival, and the Jackson Hole Film Festival. The project was featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, and CNN and was excerpted in People Magazine. The Thin Book was honored by the 2007 International Photography Awards as well as the Photo District News Annual.
Thin is also a traveling museum exhibition curated by Trudy Wilner Stack that debuted at The Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas in February, 2007 and will travel through 2010. Girl Culture, Greenfield’s last traveling exhibition, has been seen by over half a million people in more than twenty-five venues around the world. Fast Forward and Girl Culture were both optioned for development as feature films at Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures.
Her latest project, an original short film entitled kids + money, premiered at the AFI Film Festival and won the Shorts Audience Award. kids + money has also screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the Santa Barbara Film Festival, with more to come throughout 2008. The film is a conversation with young people from diverse Los Angeles communities about the role of money in their lives. From rich to poor, Pacific Palisades to East L.A., kids address how they are shaped by a culture of consumerism.
Greenfield graduated from Harvard in 1987 and started her career as an intern for National Geographic. Since then, her photographs have been regularly published in the New York Times Magazine, Time, ELLE, and American Photo and have won many awards, including the International Center for Photography Infinity Award, the Hasselblad Grant, the Community Awareness Award from the National Press Photographers, and the Moscow Biennial People’s Choice Award. She is a member of the VII Photo Agency, an international photographic cooperative, and is represented by the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York and the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles.
She lives in Venice, California with her husband, Frank Evers, and their two sons.
For more information, visit www.laurengreenfield.com .
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Lullabye
Directed by Travis David Suhr
Jack (Jason Wiechert) & Sarah (Cassandra Clark) are not only lovers, they’re best friends. They spend every waking moment with each other, kissing, laughing, and loving. Jack decides that he wants to come off his medication for schizophrenia, and live in a world that might not be real, but at least it’s not controlled. With Sarah by his side, he has to face all the bottled up emotions and secrets that come back after he stops taking his medication. The obstacles they overcome prove true love knows no boundaries, even if the love of your life is imaginary.
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Travis David Suhr was born and raised in a small town of Wyoming called Gillette. He spent most of his life loving movies and telling stories, and it wasn’t until his second year of pursuing a playwriting degree at the University of Wyoming that he realized filmmaking is his passion. He moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 2002 and has spent the last five years before attending the Zaki Gordon Institute writing screenplays and starting a production company “What Am I? Productions”. Travis graduates from ZGI in May, and plans to pursue a career in Producing. He currently lives in Sedona and is married to assistant producer of “Lullbye”, Elizabeth Suhr.
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Ancestor Eyes
Directed by Kalani Queypo
After getting sick, a young Native American woman, Willa, returns to her mother’s home where they both must come to terms with her illness. Willa’s mother, who had been a long time ’shut in’, begins venturing outside with her camcorder, taping the sunrise and mountains, bringing the outside world in to the bed ridden Willa.
Pain turns into a source of inspiration, igniting her mother’s gift for storytelling and ultimately paving a path of magical transformations.
Gripping performances by Tantoo Cardinal (Dances With Wolves, Legends of the Fall) and Rulan Tangen (The New World) are beautifully complimented with rich visual images and an impressive original soundtrack.
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Kalani Queypo had humble beginnings as a noted theater actor in New York City which allowed him to originate roles in over a dozen world premiere productions, strengthening his ability to make strong character choices based on his imagination and intuition. He has worked in some of the country’s top Tony Award winning theaters like the Goodspeed Opera House and Trinity Repertory Company. Since his move to Los Angeles four years ago, he has been very active with Native Voices Theatre, in partnership with the Autry National Center in Griffith Park.
Hollywood has embraced Kalani with prestigious projects such as the Oscar Nominated Terrence Malick film, THE NEW WORLD, in which he won the coveted role of Parahunt (the brother of Pocahontas), as well as Steven Spielberg’s Emmy Award winning mini series, INTO THE WEST. You may have recognized him in guest starring roles on hit TV shows like BONES or THE MINOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF JACKIE WOODMAN.
This past fall, Kalani’s short script was awarded with a $10,000 production grant from SCIC’s Intertribal Entertainment. His directorial debut produced an eloquent short film , ANCESTOR EYES, showcasing gripping performances, rich visual imagery and a noteworthy original soundtrack.
Kalani feels a great responsibility to the youth, both Native and non- Native, who are sparingly exposed to Native culture mostly through film, television and theater projects. This past January, after being awarded a grant from the National Geographic Society, he began production on his first feature length film, OUR VOICES, OUR STORIES. OVOS is documentary film revolving around a mentoring program for Native youth in the urban Los Angeles community. Kalani has plans to premiere it in 2009.
Kalani continues to write and develop compelling projects, observing the ever so fascinating human condition.
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Bresson & Adeline
Directed by Christopher Jarvis
Bresson & Adeline is the story of a brother and sister who suffer a peculiar affliction: they were never born. Because of this, their vain attempts at seeking their parents’ attention go unnoticed. Bresson and Adeline dress up, bang pans, jump and shout at their mother and father, to no avail. When Bresson tries to touch his mother, his hand passes through her. The children find themselves slowly fading away as their identities are lost. This is a short film about life, creativity, and most of all, the choices we make. Why does the filmmaker, his head bursting with ideas, choose to “birth” one film over another?
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Christopher Jarvis is a freshman (2007-08) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the Film & Television Production Program.
Christopher has been interested in film for many years but has only recently started to write and produce major projects. His short films include Crash, Spooked, Pieces, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, and The Fly.
Christopher enjoys the arts, having studied piano for 10 years, as well as violin and saxophone for shorter periods. The score for Pieces is his original composition. He has also been active in baseball, basketball, and swimming during his school career.
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Ten Thousand Pictures of You
Directed by Robin King
A rollercoaster ride through the animated pictures of Sarah’s world, as she seeks revenge upon the movie star who broke her heart.
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Robin’s first film ‘Ten Thousand Pictures of You’ won Best Film at the Super Shorts Film Festival, Best Editing at Leicester International Short Film Festival and came Runner-Up for the Newcomer Award at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival; and has played at over 40 international festivals. His second short film ‘Unpossible’ won the London Short Film Festival Fortean Times Award.
Robin trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and has acted on television and stage. He is currently in development on his first feature film.
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Everything Will Be OK
Directed by Don Hertzfeld
The first chapter of a three part story, Everything Will
Be Ok is a series of dark and troubling events that force Bill, the main character to reckon with the meaning of his life - or lack thereof.
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Don Hertzfeldt was born on August 1, 1976 in California’s Bay Area. He made four self-taught 16mm animated shorts at UC Santa Barbara, each one more successful than the last on an unprecedented level for student films. By 1999 these shorts had collectively helped him finance his own 35mm setup with the purchase of an antique animation stand, paving the way for his current work. His films have been seen in over a thousand film festivals and theatrical venues around the world and have received over a hundred awards. His film, Rejected, was nominated for an Oscar in 2001.
Although Don’s approach to animation is very traditional (pen, paper, film), his methods are entirely self-taught and unorthodox. His films are often created without a finished script, beginning with a central concept that’s gradually shaped out as the months (or years) of production progress. This opens the door for creative experiments, improvisations, and an element of spontaneity rare to animation. He doesn’t use computers in his animation or photography process, and rarely even works with cels.
In 2003, Don created The Animation Show with Mike Judge, a personally curated touring festival that annually brings animated short films to more American theaters than any distributor in history.
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Aquarium
Directed by Rob Meyer
At fifteen, David and his two buddies are the youngest members of the Boston Aquarium Society. The three make their way to a monthly meeting, but David has a secret he is reluctant to share.
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Rob Meyer has just finished writing a feature film, Labrador Duck, which draws inspiration, tone and characters from Aquarium. He co-wrote the film with Luke Matheny. Prior to Aquarium, Rob directed Sam’s Tail, a branded short for Heineken which has played on the Independent Film channel and features on Heineken’s Web site. His previous shorts, “Legs”, “Notes”, and “Plastic Migration”, have achieved success at film festivals around the world and are distributed by Big Film Shorts. “Plastic Migration” was recently featured on the Travel Channel. Last year, Rob shot a Behind-the-Scenes documentary of a new film directed by and starring Robert De Niro, along with Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, Jon Turturro, Joe Pesci and a crew of industry giants. He also worked at HBO Documentary Films on “The Addiction Project,” a two-hour special on drug and alcohol addiction featuring acclaimed filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker, Al Maysles, Barbara Koppel, and Eugene Jarecki. Prior to attending NYU, Rob was an Associate Producer for PBS’s NOVA and National Geographic. He worked extensively in the field on award-winning documentaries in Nepal, Antarctica, Alaska, Egypt, and Chile. A graduate of Yale University, with a joint degree in Humanities and Studies in the Environment, Rob also plays the violin and performed with the Boston Philharmonic and the Yale Symphony Orchestra.
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White Vans
Directed by Aren Hansen
When your bike gets ripped off for the second time in a month, you may find yourself wondering about the thieves and where they take the bikes. The week after this happened to East Vancouver filmmaker Aren Hansen, he began to make this film. Riding a stolen blue bicycle through the city he goes on a journey to seek out people with similar experiences and explore his fears, memories and many shades of anger. White Vans is a stylish docudrama with interviews, reenactments, a bait bike and hot Canadian music from Caribou, Pink Mountaintops and others.
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Aren has amassed a wealth of editing experience over the past eight years working on narrative, documentary and commercial projects. He recently finished editing his second feature film, ‘Only’ (Official Selection TIFF 08), directed by Ingrid Veninger and Simon Reynolds. This past year, the short film, ‘White Vans’, which he wrote, directed and edited, screened at a dozen festivals around the world, including Hot Docs, the Vancouver International Film Festival, Cinequest and the Atlantic Film Festival.
Aren grew up in Vancouver, spending most of his time making music and films; Terry Gilliam and Jimmy Page were his storytellers of choice. He studied audio engineering and 3D animation before setting off on a trip around the Middle East at 20. He returned, picked up the camera again, and immediately won Vancouver’s 24-Hour Fiilm Contest. He spent the next few years working as a freelance editor with many great Vancouver directors before joining Gemini-Award-Winning director Tony Papa at Avanti Pictures for an inspiring three years.
Aren moved to Toronto in 2006 to attend the Canadian Film Centre’s advanced Editors’ Lab training program, where he edited two 35mm short films, ‘Night’ and ‘Song of Solomon’, the latter of which just finished screening at NY’s Tribeca Film Festival.
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