Canadian shorts draw attention at TIFF

Last Updated: Monday, September 14, 2009 | 3:21 PM ET

By Jessica Wong, CBC News

Ademi Nihad appears in Guy Maddin's new fantasy-documentary short, Night Mayor. (Rebecca Sandulak/National Film Board)A melancholy folk song brought to life with stop-motion animation, an amusing tale of a minivan that triggers wedding-day cold feet and the latest from filmmaker Guy Maddin are some of the outstanding titles screening in the Short Cuts Canada program at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

'An amazing six-minute short film can bring an audience to tears, because it's such a concentrated experience'—Michael Fukushima, NFB

While feature-length movies get most of the attention, there's been a renewed interest in shorts, which filmmakers working in the form often liken to short stories and poetry.

"To get texture, characterization, empathy, audience engagement, transformation and plot — all of those things — into a six-minute or 10-minute film, that is hard work," Michael Fukushima, producer for the National Film Board of Canada's animation studio, told CBC News. "An amazing six-minute short film can bring an audience to tears, because it's such a concentrated experience."

Discipline and distillation of storytelling aside, shorts can offer a lot to both new and veteran directors: a way to build experience, a chance for artistic experimentation or a means to test different techniques.

At the TIFF news conference for his new feature flick, Up in the Air, Montreal-born filmmaker Jason Reitman recommended budding directors get started with shorts.

"There's a whole world of film festivals that you can submit your films to and go through a democratic system. If your work is good enough, it'll show at a festival, and if it's really great — who knows? — you may win some awards and get some recognition. And that's exactly what I did."

Director Guy Maddin filming on the set of Night Mayor. (Rebecca Sandulak/National Film Board)Fukushima wondered why filmmakers like Guy Maddin, Denis Villeneuve, Andrea Dorfman and Ann Marie Fleming "come back to shorts [when] feature film is where the limelight is. I think there's just this spiritual regeneration that happens when they come back."

Digging around the NFB's archives while making his 2007 feature My Winnipeg led Maddin to daydream about a new character, a "fairy-tale version of [British-Canadian documentary pioneer] John Grierson," he said. So when the government agency approached Maddin to make a film to celebrate its 70th anniversary, he already had a protagonist in mind.

The result is Night Mayor, making its debut at TIFF.

It's "a fantasy, but that was made as a documentary. It's basically just modeled on an [early] NFB favourite of mine, Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway Switchman," the Winnipeg auteur said.

Maddin said creating shorts "really keeps the rust off my eyeball, because I've found when I wasn't making shorts in between features, I wasted the first day of shooting on every feature just getting my eye back."

Canada's rep for quality

An image from the 2009 stop-motion animation Vive la rose, inspired by a melancholy French tune sung by the late Newfoundlander Émile Benoit and directed by Bruce Alcock. (Global Mechanic Media/National Film Board of Canada)Since the early days of Scottish-Canadian animation pioneer Norman McLaren, Canada has developed an international reputation for strong short films, especially in the documentary and animation genres.

Growing up in Corner Brook, N.L., filmmaker Bruce Alcock recalls being a regular visitor to the local NFB branch with his friends.

"I always had the sense that the short format was something worthwhile and beautiful and, in a lot of ways, particularly Canadian," said Vancouver-based Alcock, who was unable to accompany Vive la Rose, his beautiful and meticulously planned "old-style mixed media" stop-motion animation, to the Toronto festival.

More recently, Canadian shorts have returned to the spotlight.

"There has been, in the past few years, more public interest [in short films] because we have been particularly successful internationally," Fukushima said, citing recent Oscar-winning animations Ryan, The Danish Poet and the acclaimed Madame Tutli-Putli.

"That kind of public exposure, that kind of public success certainly helps fan the flames of interest in short film."

Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski's Madame Tutli-Putli is among the recent acclaimed titles that have returned attention to Canadian shorts. (National Film Board)Technological advances — from the rise in online video sharing via YouTube to the myriad of cellphones and other portable devices with ready-to-watch screens — have also played a part.

"Someone's riding a streetcar home from work. They've only got half an hour, but they've got this funky phone with a decent screen. They're not going to sit down and watch an epic feature film, but they might watch a short," Toronto filmmaker and recent Canadian Film Centre grad Spencer Maybee said.

Though it runs less than 20 minutes, Maybee's Man v. Minivan explores, with both wit and understanding, how the gift of a minivan on the eve of a wedding throws the groom's impending marriage and romantic future in jeopardy.

"I think people are starting to open their minds to a new ways of receiving narrative and receiving stories and exploring visual worlds," he said.

Hazards of popularity

At the same time, the advent of new media is causing worry for several champions of the short — whether it be over piracy and distributors' concerns, the excess of online video material or the way some groups are co-opting the form as a means to an end, for instance as advertising.

Some people "use short films as ways to entice people to their larger product. That's a real concern to me. Then suddenly short film is no longer art, it's just a widget to bring customers to whatever it is that people are really selling," Fukushima said.

A scene from Spencer Maybee's short Man v. Minivan, which in less than 20 minutes tells a complete tale of how a gifted minivan throws a groom's impending marriage and romantic future in jeopardy. (Canadian Film Centre)

There is also the perennial resource factor. A short film's length (less than 60 minutes) makes it comparatively less costly and quicker to produce than a feature, but it still represents a significant investment.

For instance, many feel that "for a little bit more heartache, effort and lack of sleep, you can have a feature under your belt, and you can actually sell a feature," Maybee said.

But as long as cinema is still considered an art form, directors are "always going to come back to short films, or always going to start in short films, as a way to hone, define, refine, redefine their practice," Fukushima said. "As long as that happens, short films as cinema [will] continue."