Rob Munday
As we continue to put a lot of our focus into growing our new platform Shortverse, it provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on the goals of Short of the Week. With Shortverse offering improved tools for discovery and connection, I still see S/W’s role as providing inspiration and insight for emerging filmmakers. With this in mind, we’ve got some informative, educational new articles coming soon – so keep an eye out for those in June.
Short films have always been our passion and motivation on S/W, so be sure to keep letting us know what you think of the work we do in comments on this site, YouTube and our various social media channels. And keep submitting those shorts, we can’t wait to see them – Rob Munday, Managing Editor
Team Favorites
Our May programming was the perfect highlight of the eclectic mix of work you find in the short film arena. Featuring stories set in the ruthless environment of Ghanaian boarding schools, the Aotearoan wilderness and the Bulgarian countryside, we were guided through these lands by young hustlers, expectant fathers and children who didn’t exist. In the trio of films selected as our Best of the Month picks you’ll travel to haunting hospitals, join a young man on a journey of sexual discovery and witness some of the strangest musical instruments you’ll ever see – enjoy!
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also the heart is a muscle by Antonio Vasaturo
Based on the real-life experiences of a friend, Antonio Vasaturo’s striking 15-minute film follows a young man rebuilding his body after illness. As his obsession with his physique intensifies, he embarks on a new journey of discovery as an attraction to similar bodies arises. Told through a series of vignettes centred around its protagonist, also the heart is a muscle, is an experimental portrait of a complex, but relatable character.
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Everybody Goes to the Hospital by Tiffany Kimmel
Over a year in the making, Tiffany Kimmel‘s stop-motion animation Everybody Goes to the Hospital is a surreal and personal exploration of her mother’s real-life childhood trauma in 1963. Following a young girl named ‘Little Mata’ as she suffers from appendicitis, the film presents a dark and strange visual world, which is all together unsettling and cold. But themes of sickness go beyond the physical as it becomes clear that where there should be love are feelings of resentment. Told through the eyes of a child, Everybody Goes to the Hospital is shockingly heavy, beautifully poetic, and fantastically haunting.
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The Flute by Nick Roney
The SXSW Midnight screening is notorious for unearthing some unforgettable short films. From watching Oscar-winning directors getting far too close to witnessing the tale of a girl with an anus for a mouth, if you’re a regular attendee of this highlight of the festival circuit you would have seen it all. The 2023 line-up was no different, as the audience was immersed in worlds overrun with mind controlling parasites and vibrator obsessions, however, when the lights came up in the Alamo Drafthouse there was only one film on everyone’s lips – Nick Roney’s The Flute.
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Most Viewed
(spin) by Precious Wura Alabi
There is something incredibly cinematic about laundromats. Maybe it’s the symmetrical look it gives the frame, but in terms of public spaces depicted on screen, the place where we wash our dirty laundry has always carried a special emotional load – apologies for the pun, but I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling that way. In (spin), writer/director and lead actor Precious Wura Alabi uses that setting to capture a first date, as over the course of one wash cycle, Zekiel and Izzy will have to figure out if they’ll want to see each other again.