DC Shorts holds Closing Night Party at Atlas, near H St Festival; last showcase

Saturday September 15, 2012. I attended the DC Shorts Showcase 12 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in NE Washington DC; link here. 

  

It’s a good thing that I took the X2 bus, and didn’t try to park.  I didn’t even know that the H-Street festival was going on at the theater site.  After the film, I attended the Closing Night Party, in a theater in the Atlas;  it was small as it stared.

The video below was a 2009 interview of DC Shorts for Comcast.

   

“Try a Little Harder” (13 min) has a young man balancing his dedication to art work against attentiveness to his girl friend , and a piece of his art gets “stuck on her”, resulting in some public physical comedy.  Matt Damon would approve.

  

“Viral” (13 min, dir. Dustin Waldman) examines the way user-generated content gives “ordinary” people a chance to be noticed.  He gives an example of a YouTube video of a boy’s dentist visit that got millions of hits.  A Kansas State University professor talks about the relationship between anonymity and temporary fame.  The film was sponsored by Florida State University.

“Controlled” (“Ferngesteurt”, Germany, 17 min, dir Hendrik Maximilian Schmitt). A female therapist probes a handsome teenager Maik (Janik Schumann) to learn why he stabbed an immigrant (not necessarily Muslim), and the gradually revealed backstory reveals heavy stuff, including his being bullied and then called a “gay Nazi”, as if that were not an oxymoron.

“Outside My Window” (5 min.):  A man’s opportunities pass him by, and then comes tragedy.

“Advancing Age” (7 min.):   At age 30, you’re not yet ready for black balloons, but the colorful ones will keep chasing you.

“The Christmas Tree” (11 min).  A father tries to buy his son a Christmas tree, only to have it stolen at a gas station.  Appears to be filmed on Long Island.

“Ideologies” (“Furet, Ommbitt”, Norway. 6 min).  Military veterans recall their days as lifers while now in a nursing home, and they don’t know they’re no longer in the Army.

“What’s Life Got to Do with It?” (16 min, dir. Noah Weisberg).  Noah directs himself as a handsome and nerdish twenty-something bachelor looking for adventure and finding he has signed an apartment lease in modern  “Valley” LA with a zombie.  He’s forced to make best friends.  Compare to Strand’s 2011 feature horror comedy “L.A. Zombie”.