A romantic short film about a film archivist and a struggling actress. Thomas works in the dingy depths of an old film archive, but the one highlight of his job is Ruby. He has worked loose a brick in the adjoining wall of her dressing room, and spies on her like a massive creep. Ruby…
A retelling of the myth of Sisyphus in Scots, with the man himself recast as a cairn builder, endlessly pushing stones uphill to mountaintop cairns. Tongue in cheek, with more than a little added humour, a great chance to see this little animated short from the 70s.
A crime noir complete with grizzled detective, femme fatale, and a missing husband. Filmed on the streets of 90s Edinburgh, the smoky black-and-white plays to the mean side of a city increasingly being whitewashed for tourists. Funny and stylistic, both the tropes and the setting filled me with satisfied nostalgia.
79 Springs is a short documentary biopic of Ho Chi Minh. Now maybe, like me, you know sweet fuck all about Ho Chi Minh. I know that he wrote the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which directly lifted words straight from the American Declaration of Independence in hopes that it might make the Americans not shit…
When Che Guevara died, Fidel Castro himself told Santiago Alvarez to make his obituary film, and he gave him 48 hours in which to do it. What Santiago created was a feat in resourcefulness and ingenuity as well as a moving testament to a man who lived and died for his cause. As I said…
Lena Horne’s song Now! was banned from the airwaves in the US, because its call for civil rights and racial equality was deemed in danger of starting a riot. Which, to quote Toni Morrison who had her book banned for the same reason, “How powerful is that!” Lena gave the song to Santiago Alvarez, who…
The retrospective on the work of Santiago Alvarez kicked off with LBJ, an acerbic look at the career of US President Lindon B. Johnson. Santiago basically made newsreels, like the Pathe News reels we had here. But with the Cuban embargo ensuring a dearth of equipment and, well, everything needed to make a film, Santiago…
A energetic and amusing animated short film, about a boy finding his identity in a tug of war between his parents. Told without dialogue, the boy is shown growing up between his mother’s place, a greenhouse full of plants, where she grew him in a pot, and his father’s place, a car garage, where he…
A breathtakingly beautiful short film about a brother and sister dealing differently with wrapping up their lives before moving to the big city. The brother is facing the future, he is eager to get on with living his life in the city, and all the opportunities it might afford. The sister wants to go one…
Oskar Salomonowitz was a 12-year-old boy who drew 206 pages on a flip book to make his first animation, when he was suddenly killed in an accident. His father finishes the story. The animation itself is a delightfully childlike cartoon of two stickmen fighting with swords while flying with jetpacks on their feet. The joyful…