Criatura is the kind of short film you should feel, rather than figure out. Intense orchestral music, vivid colour, and shots evoking disjointed memory or dream, combine to give a sense of a character’s inner journey. It opens with the narrator saying that a monster entered her, created a void within her, and thus “you…
This short film is about the filmmaker’s marriage, the part that is the struggle for government recognition and the part that is about loving intimacy. Only 6 minutes long, it features thousands of images of their joined life, snapshots, wedding photos, documents and paperwork, all frenetically flashing up on screen, like a strobing fast-forward effect.…
What first made me want to come along to the Map of Mexican Dreams short film night was this last short film. Exile is a stop motion animation. It depicts a woman, painting alone in her home, each one a self-portrait with her back to the viewer. Ignored in another room is a suitcase. It…
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what this one’s about. There’s a cyborg, and a young dancer in a pink Lolita wig, and skateboarders, and a bunch of stuff. Colour and sound evokes a sense of otherworldliness. But whatever it was driving at was lost on me. The blurb says it’s about a cyborg…
Lupita is a short documentary profiling the work of indigenous rights activist and Acteal massacre survivor, Guadalupe Vazquez Luna, known as Lupita. In 1997, just before Christmas, a community of peaceful, unarmed, indigenous activists in the village of Acteal, were at prayer in church, when government-supported right-wing paramilitary soldiers burst in and opened fire. 45…
Time and the Seashell is a short film in which an indigenous man meditates on time and the changes he has seen in his lifetime. The film begins with a young boy picking up a seashell and listening to it to hear the sound of the ocean. As the young boy imagines his life to…
This short film conveys a sense of Mayan life, through the stories of children, the bodies of trees, the canopy of the night sky. It tries to communicate a worldview in which all cosmology is connected, from the stars to the ceiba to the self. The ceiba tree is at the centre of this film.…
Went along to the CCA for a night of short films being put on by CinemaAttic, Map of Mexican Dreams. Absolutely stowed it was. It kicked off with Arcangel. The title character is a man who travels to the city, carrying an old woman on his back, in an attempt to try to find a…
Fucking belter of a documentary about the 80s London S&M lesbian scene. Told by the legends that lived it, Rebel Dykes covers the founding of Chain Reaction, the publication of Quim, and the House of Lords abseil protest of Section 28. Yaldi! It traces its roots to the Greenham Clapham peace camp, which was a…
When the credits rolled on Belle, it was a standing ovation. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. Spectacular. Belle is the story of a shy young girl whose avatar becomes the biggest singing sensation in the online world of U. When her concert is interrupted by the renegade user labelled…