Short films can be long on pleasure

I like my columns,'' says John Belushi's Chicago newspaperman in Continental Divide, a romantic comedy of some years back. "They're short.''

I know just what he means.

Though no one doubts that long films such as Akira Kurosawa's 207-minute Seven Samurai or Italy's six-hour The Best of Youth can offer transcendent experiences, not enough is said about the pleasure of getting a complete aesthetic experience without having to pack a lunch or invest a major part of your day.

Short films because of their shortness bring perfection within reach; they offer satisfactions and difficulties that parallel in cinematic terms what Isaac Bashevis Singer, in writing about the short story, described as "the utmost challenge to the creative writer".

"Unlike the novel,'' said Singer, "which can absorb and even forgive lengthy digressions, flashbacks and loose construction, the short story must aim directly at its climax. It must possess uninterrupted tension and suspense. Also, brevity is its very essence.''

Oscar-qualifying

When you think about short films that way, it's not surprising that some of the best moviegoing adventures have involved items that meet the 40 minutes or less criterion that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has set as its definition of an Oscar-qualifying short film.

Because it is so focused and so clear, a great short has an effect that is not easily forgotten. I can still remember the audience at an academy screening reacting in delight as the plot of 1992's Sam Karmann-directed French short Omnibus unfolded like a steel trap.

We're presented with a man who has taken the same two-passenger commuter train every day for months. Suddenly, after he's boarded, he's told that the train no longer stops at his local station. How he attempts to get the conductor and the engineer to stop and the unexpected situations his pleading leads to so captivated the audience that the Oscar the film won was a foregone conclusion.

The same thing happened the following year in the animated category with Nick Park's The Wrong Trousers, which gained the animator the second of his four Oscars. Watching the team of Wallace and Gromit take on a sinister penguin masquerading as a chicken while making the serious academy crowd howl with laughter like delighted teenagers is something you definitely don't see every day.

Despite the excitement the best shorts exude, they aren't talked about a lot because, except around Oscar time, they're not as easy to see as Pirates of the Caribbean. Though special events and festivals are emerging to make shorts accessible, the form has diminished in stature in the 70-plus years since Academy Award categories for them were first introduced.

That would be the 1931-32 season, the Oscars' fifth year, and it is an indication of how central shorts were to Hollywood that the academy recognised them two years before awards were created for editing and music. One of the films to win that first year, Hal Roach's The Music Box starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and a troublesome set of stairs, is still a comedy classic.

Omitting

In the 1930s and 1940s, no movie-house experience was complete without a short. As producer Pete Smith wrote in the foreword to Leonard Maltin's Selected Short Subjects, an exhibitor "would no more think of omitting one or more shorts and a newsreel from his programme than he would have kept his theatre closed on New Year's Eve. Today a short in a theatre is practically as rare as a tick on a rubber duck".

Though the Oscar category names have changed (from cartoons, comedy and novelty in 1932 to animated and live action today), the academy has resisted attempts to eliminate the award because shorts still have a purpose in today's much different film industry.

Because they are cheaper and easier to make than features, shorts serve as calling cards for young filmmakers eager to show off their gifts as well as final examinations for graduates of film schools. Festivals from Cannes to Sundance solicit them and give them awards.

'West Bank Story'

And sometimes even more unexpected honours come their way. Which is what happened to West Bank Story.

Directed by Ari Sandel while he was at the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California, this 22-minute spoof on West Side Story is set to be the opening-night attraction of the 12th annual Temecula Valley International Film & Music Festival on September 13 in Temecula, California.

Set in the West Bank, this mock musical features a forbidden love between Israeli soldier David and Palestinian Fatima, a love that cannot be because their families operate the deadly rival snack stands Hummus Hut and Kosher King.

Expertly made and impressive down to the finger-snapping of the rival gangs, West Bank Story shows that short films done right retain the power to surprise and delight.

Los Angeles Times-Washington Post