Short of the Week
Articles about Short of the Week
A Collection of Short Films Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day
Quechua and Aymara filmmaker Sisa Quispe joins us on Short of the Week to recommend a playlist of short films to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day
URPI: Her Last Wish
Filmmaking can be a cathartic process. While this is hardly a revelatory observation, it can offer valuable insight into a filmmaker’s motivations and the personal significance of the stories they choose to tell. For Sisa Quispe, the writer, director and star of today’s pick, URPI: Her Last Wish, bringing the film to the screen became a journey towards “better understanding who I am today”, while also serving as a fitting tribute to her recently departed abuelita.
One of Those
It’s pretty common to have people in our lives that we’d rather avoid and never cross paths with again. Jane is not afforded that privilege when, as she is starting work, a man with whom she shares some bad blood walks in. Is it really him? Has he recognised her? This simple yet universal premise is the starting point of writer/director Cosmo Salovaara’s One of Those, where he keeps us on the edge of our seats with a perfectly crafted, incredibly volatile, simmering tension.
Shorts Weekly Has Moved to Substack
The Short of the Week newsletter has moved from Beehiiv to Substack - join us on the platform now for our regular aggregation of notable news and ideas.
Le Chevreuil (The Roe Deer)
Watch Le Chevreuil (The Roe Deer) by Delphine Priet-Mahéo - an animated short film about an overwhelmed mother finding escape in the company of a roe deer.
Don't Puke
A woman parties a little too hard… We all know what that means. With smudged makeup, she embarks on an odyssey home, with the hope of finding food along the way. This situation will definitely trigger memories for many of us, or not… and might actually deter others from binge drinking. Unsatisfied with most depictions of drunkenness on screen, writer/director Daniel Chisholm crafted Don’t Puke, a hyperrealistic chronicle of such an endeavour, without the consequences of the hangover in the morning.
Jesus 2
If you’re making an animated short called Jesus 2, in which Christ returns to Earth for his second coming, there’s probably little point in approaching the material with too much reverence. Sincerity, in this case, would seem almost beside the point. Instead, writer/director Jesse Moynihan opts for the abstract, the surreal and the gloriously unhinged, cramming his eight-minute pilot with space pirates, magical rainbow goo and a resurrected Jesus who is not the saviour, but a “complete asshole.”
Learning to Eat Cake
Watch Learning to Eat Cake by Juliette Strangio - a short film about a young woman who reframes a strange & coercive date as a comical tale to her friends.