THE SHORT FILM: HISTORY & AESTHETICS

Most film students begin their careers directing short films. However, during their formative years in college, they are only exposed to full-length features. The main objective of this course is to resolve this contradiction by helping the future director to recognize the specific characteristics of the short format.

This course studies international short films from the silent period to the present day by focusing on narrative compression and stylistic unity. Special attention is paid to the different aesthetic qualities of the short film in relation to its mode of organization (fiction, documentary, animation, and avant-garde). Each session includes the screening of two or three short films twice: first, without interruption; second, with a detailed shot-by-shot analysis that considers narrative structure, dialogue, framing, lighting, camera movement, use of sound and music, editing techniques, etc.

Films discussed in the classroom include The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917), An Andalusian Dog (Buñuel, 1929), Rain (Ivens, 1929), Tit for Tat (Rogers, 1935), The Ventriloquist Dummy (Cavalcanti, 1945), Blood of the Beasts (Franju, 1949), Night and Fog (Resnais, 1955), Two Men and a Wardrobe (Polanski, 1958), Glass (Bert Haanstra, 1958), An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Enrico, 1962), La Jetée (Marker, 1962), Patriotism (Mishima, 1966), The Perfect Human (Leth, 1968), Ghost Trio (Beckett, 1976), Life Lessons (Scorsese, 1989), Food (Švankmajer, 1992), Dogs Have No Hell (Kaurismäki, 2002), Cousins? (Jarmusch, 2003), and The Gal Who Got Rattled (Coen Brothers, 2018).