Perhaps the directors' special love for the short film is the main reason for the survival of this type of art, especially in light of the weak public demand for it, but why do directors love the short film?
The emergence of the short film came with the birth of the seventh art in the nineties of the 19th century, and although the film industry has changed completely since that time, it still maintains a great position among film directors, as it is difficult to find one of the directors in the world who did not present a number of short films during his career, especially in the beginning.
Festivals and major awards such as the Oscars allocate categories for short films and award valuable prizes to works that are admired by the jury.
Perhaps the directors' special love for the short film is the main reason for the survival of this type of art, especially in light of the weak public demand for it.
Why do directors like short films?
The production of the short film does not require a million-dollar budget like that needed for the feature film, which makes its production a little easier, especially for a director at the beginning of life who seeks to present his competencies and talents to the cinema market and its workers.
The short film allows more freedom, given the lack of participation of a major donor institution that finances the work alone and controls its content, as well as obliging the director to specific dates for its completion, and thus the artist becomes completely free in what he presents and when he presents it.
Why is the public not accepting short films?
Despite the importance of short films and their being major milestones in the career of great directors such as Christopher Nolan and David Lynch, the public does not mention short films and often remains in the shadows, because the audience is looking for a long story that they enjoy and unfolds over an hour, and because moviegoers are forced to move to Movies and pay for, they want to get the most for their money.
Short films need to be supported and introduced so that the audience realizes that they achieve a great deal of pleasure despite their shortness, as they constitute a medium commensurate with detailed scenes and visual experiences, and they are considered a space for voices that are often suppressed in the world of feature films.
But the matter may have changed after the multiplicity of viewing platforms such as “YouTube”, “Amazon Prime”, “Netflix” and others, in addition to the openness of social networking sites, the growing internet audience and the urgent need for different types of visual content.
“Ivalu” .. the most prominent short film in the Oscars 2023
Ivalu (2023) by Anders Walter is one of the short films nominated for the Oscar for Best Short Film in the 2023 season. The film embodies the loneliness of Pipaluk (Mila Heilmann Kreutzmann) through shots of the sweeping icy landscape as she traverses vast lands in search of her missing sister, Ivalu (Nivi Larsen), as she reminisces about them together.
The film is an in-depth look at the abuse Ivalo endured, and it is on the journey that Byblok realizes these painful moments and her sister's feelings at the time. The cinematic footage shows the natural wonders of Greenland, as well as the small rural towns where the two sisters grew up amidst the beauty and vastness of this land.
The film is based on the graphic novel of the same title by Danish novelist Morten Dürr, which revolves around violence against children and adults.
Director and screenwriter Anders Walter kept the main thread of the novel and worked on adapting and condensing the script to make an Oscar-worthy short film.
In his interview with No Film School, Walter said that a friend recommended the graphic novel to him, because he had previously turned two graphic novels into films, and when he read the novel, he liked its subject, and the novel was very poetic, so he liked to turn it into a short film.
Landmarks in the History of Short Films
Most of those interested in cinema believe that George Lucas's cinematic journey began with the "Star Wars" series, but in fact, it began with the movie "The Electronic Labyrinth", which he directed in the year 1967 while he was at the University of Southern California Film School. It is a 15-minute film about a man trying to escape from his pursuers in a computerized world that is constantly tracking his movement.
The movie "Doodlebug" in 1997, directed by Christopher Nolan, showed the dark image that he preferred in his films, which is a cornerstone of his successful career. The film revolves around a man who is tormented by a bug in his filthy apartment and highlights in 3 minutes the frantic struggle between them, and the film shows Nolan's penchant for visual effects.
For one reason or another, most people know director David Lynch as the director of the movie “Dune” in the year 1984, or as the creator of the “Twin Peaks” singing group, but not everyone knows that he is the director of a number of short films that are considered significant cinematic short films such as Alphabet in 1969, in which Lynch transformed an ordinary scene of a woman lying in bed into a surreal nightmare about letters of the alphabet.
The woman awakens from the nightmare and spews blood from her mouth, staining the white sheets, just as the children's cheers disturb the quiet of the suburb.