Babelgum has always been interesting to me. One of the most well-funded and artistically ambitious video-streaming sites, it always seems on the verge of being undone by a clunky interface and lack of interactivity. They have solid films, but there is no transparency on how to identify them, nor opportunity to share your thoughts about them. Anyway with that off my chest, in continuing our series of recent online contest winners, Babelgum concluded their 2nd annual online film fest recently. In keeping with their M.O., there was no viewer’s favorite award, simply Grand Jury awards, and a special series of awards by a celebrity judge, noted filmmaker Spike Lee.

A film called Bab al Samah, was the big winner, winning the Grand Jury prize for short film and the “Looking For Genius” prize, but I felt its exoticism and admittedly impressive camera movements disguised a run of the mill story, hamstrung by an unconscionably vacant lead performance. What do I recommend instead? Try watching The Ladies, Spike Lee’s choice for best documentary short. It’s twelve minutes inside a claustrophobic apartment with two elderly Hungarian sisters. They live rather independently and continue to work as seamstresses at an age when frankly it is an achievement to be alive, and hearing their story is fascinating.

The Ladies is not a dynamic film, nor is it artistic in the sense of including rapid cutaways of falling rain, or wilting flowers. Interviews with the individual sisters while at work are interlaced with bizarrely-framed long takes of the women in the apartment doing mundane things. These shots in particular are slow, but lovely in the unobtrusive way they insert you into the lives of the women. The film can be frustrating because it does not adhere to a pat, narrative arc, but it is rewarding to the viewer attenuated to nuance; as grudges, heartaches and melancholy peek out from the tough and wise monologues of the characters.

Watch The Ladies at:  Babelgum