AN EXTRA VIEW / Fringe Film Fest 2021 — My Top Ten Favourite Online Shorts

Content notes: This blog post is for adults only as it refers mainly to films for adults. Please also see the section about content notes below.


Contents:


Intro | Fringe! Film - My Top 10 | !!! Content notes !!!
My Top 10! | My Next Top 6! | Full List | Post-Amble | Why I wrote this


INTRO

I LOVE short films. I used to watch a lot of films — all sorts of genres from features to shorts. 

For the past 9 years or so, I only really tend to watch shorts in intense doses like when I’ve been on the plane to and from Hong Kong to visit family. For various reasons, my long-distance flights stopped a few years back, and with that so did my yearly dosage of short films!

Well, it’s November 2021.. let me set the scene… I get cosy in bed with silencer headphones (and ice cream for at least one programme) and a mug of decaf breakfast tea for the rest… And it was way comfier than being on the plane…

This year, the UK-based Fringe Film Fest screened 37 shorts online and I watched 34 of them in 48 hours! 

I don’t usually rate things. 

I find the subjectivity of art reviewing deeply problematic (as it usually stinks of cishet white privilege), but also I think the BESEA gen x, trans-masc, non-binary perspective on film is somewhat unusual so I’ll take a chance.

For each film, I listed 2–3 aspects I enjoyed.

For my “Top Three”, I’ll expand a little more with some vintage references.

Fringe screened 4 shorts programmes:

!!! CONTENT NOTES !!!

  • Fringe! Film provide these content notes for the 4 programmes: Discussion of abuse, death, flashing images, discussions of homophobia, nudity, discussions of suicide, surgery/illness, righteous murder, discussions of transphobia and trauma, un-simulated sexual contact, violence.

  • Before watching a film, I would recommend checking the content notes for the individual film.

  • I do not give content notes on the content of each film, however I added a note about something in particular if I noticed it.

ARE YOU READY? Here we go…..!

MY TOP 10! (in reverse order)


10. 

FISH BOWL — dir. Julian Konuk. UK 2021. 16'

Things I loved:

  • Relaxed voiceover with messy, grotesque visuals.

  • Poetically glam everyday intersectional feminist surreal aestheticThe

  • punk/horror captions

9. 

TO THE FARMHOUSE — dir. Sarah Hill. USA 2021. 11'


Things I loved:

  • The mix of animation styles, especially messy 3d which seems to go against the grain of the clean-cut CGI or clean-cut 2d worlds

  • Exploring/transforming trans trauma (abuse) through spoken word and animation

8. 

A REAL GIRL — dir Praewa Bulthaweenan — UK 2018. 9'


Things I loved:

  • Meant a lot to me to see LGBTIQA+ ESEA comedy performance

  • Surreal yet realist, lo-fi, deadpan humour

  • Bonus points for (staged?) conversation with parent — making art about family and home has intersectional feminist and decolonising roots (I feel) and is often undervalued/erased in whitewashed art worlds.

7. 

MOUNTAIN LODGE — dir. Jordan Wong. USA 2020. 8'

Things I loved:

  • Consumerist satire — one of my hot topics as a teenage art student

  • I love parallel worlds and the mix of ephemera, adverts, different genres.

  • Nostalgia! One of my first experiences of interactive digital storytelling back in the mid/late 1990s was a Windows internet browser animation.

6. 

MY MOTHER’S GIRLFRIEND — dir. Arun Fulara. India 2021. 15'


Things I loved:

  • Stunning cinematography

  • Older lesbian/queer female characters — less frequently covered which feels heartening in the sense of visualising a future for LGBTIQA+ folk but also fighting homophobia and misogyny.

5. 

ROADKILL — dir. Aliza Bruder. USA 2021. 16'

Things I loved:

  • Like My Mother’s Girlfriend, gorgeous cinematography

  • Somewhat unusual characters with a familiar-ish brief encounter storyline.

  • I have a crush on that butch who lives on the farm.


Note for veggie friends… It does feature dead animals but there is (I would argue) a transformative aspect.

4. 

ARE YOU STILL WATCHING — dirs. Alex Cardy, Tali Polichtuk, Kitty Chrystal. Australia 2021. 6'

Things I loved:

  • Medical appointments can be so tense/intense for trans / LGBTIQA+, subverting the idea of one in this way is radical.

  • Sexy, trippy, hilarious. 


MY TOP THREE FILMS!


3.

RILIE RASKELL — dir. Sam Roberts. US 2021. 18'

A gripping satirical intersectional feminist horror with viciously funny moments.

Recalling moments from this film a morning or so after I watched it woke me up from a slump of depression reverberating in screeches of laughter. I still smile when I think about the funny bits. Maybe it’s because seeing 19-year-old bi-racial actor Emma Galbraith who plays the title role reminded me of myself as a teen! 

When I was younger I watched a fair amount of horror — Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and others — which I now deem to be misogynistic and/or patriarchal. 

Perhaps it’s post-trauma and/or my tastes have changed… I don’t watch horror anymore. Feminist film theory (plus the Bechdel test) gave me a new lens and I couldn’t really look back. However, this film reminded me that among the horror films I used the watch, those with satirical comments on culture and society resonated more for me.

I WAS NOT READY.* I will never un-see what I saw in this film! This film is described as a comedy. However, programmers are requested to add a horror/gore content note for it…

Riley Raskell on IMDB

Content notes: Horror/gore, righteous murder, drug use. This list may not be complete. Please check the content notes provided by the film screening or promotional pages.

2.

GREEN THOUGHTS — dir. William Hong-xiao Wei. UK 2020. 20'

As a Chinese trans queer person born in 1980, I was aware of anti-Japanese sentiment, especially among my grandparents’ generation from WW2 trauma. I’d be curious to know if there was any intended reference to this prejudice (which I have not had the chance to discuss with others), but either way, Green Thoughts felt magical and healing to me.

The wind-swept movement and vivid green of the field scenes give off an eerie enchantment. Kind of like the director is haunting Monet. Painterly (I sort of hate that word..!) but lesbian and decolonising. Then there’s the moment when one character’s face appears against what looks like an autumnal 70s haze. Like several other films, including Fish Bowl, Green Thoughts had a distinctly retro feel to it.

I used to love Kieslowski around 2001 — the mid-2000s. As mentioned above, thanks to the Bechdel Test, there’s a big chunk missing from my film-watching experience. Then around 2019, I borrowed a box set of films by Atom Egoyan.

I found William Hong-xiao Wei’s focus on the intimacy/ies between the two femme characters a radical queering of films I connect with the psychological thriller/romance genre but with nothing problematic to write home about. Just beauty.

Green Thoughts’ hypnotic, slow, ghostly sensuousness also reminded me of two films by Yau Ching 游靜, screened virtually by Queering Now earlier in 2021: Is There Anything Specific You Want Me To Tell You About? 你有什麼特別的要我告訴你？(1991) and I’m Starving 我餓 (1999). All three films convey nostalgia, longing, regret and mystery.

1.

UPLANDS UTOPIA I.O.U. — dir. Louise Ashcroft. UK 2021. 22'

This satirical animation — a jaunty, at times frantic gathering of grim realities had me howling with laughter at 1am. A seemingly never-ending succession of hilariously named, quirky characters reveal an absurdist story.

From Alice through to his short films, I was once devoted to Czech film-maker, Jan Švankmajer, whose surreal wordless dialogues between 2 characters express emotions such as desire, love, hate and others much more ambiguously. I even wrote an essay for my MA on his work. Created in a contrasting climate, the way the characters are cut out from a wide array of materials, and appear in various mostly industrial/ concrete/ hard locations reminded me of Švankmajer.

The lively grotesquerie also brought back some memories of my days as an Art Foundation student at CSM — experimenting with mediums — from expanding foam to water balloons and a stainless steel sink I found on the way in one day.

As with Fish Bowl, I was amazed and grateful that Uplands Utopia lasted so long!

Content notes: Flashing images. Reference to absurdist self-destructiveness.

I loved them so much… HERE ARE…


MY NEXT TOP 6!

…by a narrow margin…!

16.

4:3 — dir. Amy Pennington. UK 2020. 9'


Things I loved:

15.

LAST ROMANTICS OF THE WORLD — Henrique Arruda. Brazil 2020. 23'


Things I loved:

  • Beautiful to see older, gender non-conforming queers explore experiences.

  • A sense of LGBTIQA+ fantasy, history, sensuousness, intimacy and warmth.

  • As with My Mother’s Girlfriend, heartening to see an (even) older relationship on-screen — complete with couple bickering.

14.

PUSSY CRUISING — dirs. Masa Zia Lenardic, Anya Wutej. Germany 2021. 8'


Things I loved:

  • As with 4:3, I found the variety of characters highly creative and entertaining.

  • Fun to see a fantasy take on cruising which is more often a cismale-dominated concept — both in physical reality, but even on film.

  • The mood of the forest and pacing was pretty intense — in a good way which built up to the euphoric climax.

13.

FLY AWAY WITH ME — dirs. Maude Matton, Amina Mohamed, Nikki Shaffeeullah. Canada. 10'

Things I loved:

  • Neatly, ingeniously subversive.

  • How might one go about personifying intelligence?

12.

TRACING UTOPIA — dirs. Catarina de Sousa, Nick Tyson, Portugal, USA. 2021 26'


Things I loved:

  • Young trans people’s voices remain unheard as trans people are being scapegoated and silenced by the media in the UK and elsewhere. In this film, it is clear that trans youth have plenty of opinions and ideas about community-building and empowerment.

11.

LONELY COWGIRL — Lydia Garrett. UK 2020. 5'

Things I loved:

  • The languor. The eye contact. The comic timing. Timeless serenity meets consensual chemistry.

  • Lil Nas X worthy costumes and characters.

  • Where is this queer saloon bar? I need to find it!!!

FULL LIST

1. UPLANDS UTOPIA — dir. Louise Ashcroft. UK 2021. 22'

2. GREEN THOUGHTS — dir. William Hong-xiao Wei. UK 2020. 20'

3. RILEY RASKELL — dir. Sam Roberts. US 2021. 18'

4. ARE YOU STILL WATCHING — dirs. Alex Cardy, Tali Polichtuk, Kitty Chrystal. Australia 2021. 6'

5. ROADKILL — dir. Aliza Bruder. USA 2021. 16'

6. MY MOTHER’S GIRLFRIEND — dir. Arun Fulara. India 2021. 15'

7. MOUNTAIN LODGE — dir. Jordan Wong. USA 2020. 8'8.

8. A REAL GIRL — dir Praewa Bulthaweenan — UK 2018. 9'

9. TO THE FARMHOUSE — dir. Sarah Hill. USA 2021. 11'

10. FISH BOWL — dir. Julian Konuk. UK 2021. 16'

11. LONELY COWGIRL — Lydia Garrett. UK 2020. 5'

12. TRACING UTOPIA — dirs. Catarina de Sousa, Nick Tyson, Portugal, USA. 2021 26'

13. FLY AWAY WITH ME — dirs. Maude Matton, Amina Mohamed, Nikki Shaffeeullah. Canada. 10'

14. PUSSY CRUISING — dirs. Masa Zia Lenardic, Anya Wutej. Germany 2021. 8'

15. LAST ROMANTICS OF THE WORLD — Henrique Arruda. Brazil 2020. 23'

16. 4:3 — dir. Amy Pennington. UK 2020. 9'

POST-AMBLE

Something interesting happened to me as a result of watching these films. LGBTIQA+ and BIPOC film-making must be nurtured!

Screening online shorts gives people access to films who are remaining home for reasons such as health, disability, and childcare. A few friends commented that they could have done with a bit more time to schedule in the viewing of the films. I’ll try and let people know earlier next year! I understand that Fringe Film operates due to a team of volunteers and were running IRL screenings and events as well.

In seeing all these bodies, stories and scenarios, I travelled into deeper parts of myself and I emerged feeling more human. I re-found my sarcastic and irreverent, chaotically oddball, unreachably mysterious self/selves. In seeing us desired, I wanted to be desired. In seeing the love and passion that the filmmakers put into the films and the programmers put into organising the festival, I felt a flickering of love reach me across the miles.

WHY I WROTE THIS

My intention is to document what I’ve seen and share my discoveries with others — hoping that readers will get to see the films in full sometime. I am aware of mainly white cishet film reviewers, so I would like to share my opinion. This has been written voluntarily, out of enthusiasm, in my spare time. I didn’t set out to review the films, just to enjoy them so I’m relying on memory and a few quick internet searches!

If you spot a mistake on this page, please drop me a line and I’ll do my best to correct it.

Mental health resources


THERAPY

BAATN - The Black, African and Asian therapy network (UK)

Pink Therapy - Gender and Sexual Diversity Therapy in the UK


UK HELPLINES

Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline: 0300 330 0630

Mind Infoline: 0300 123 3393

Samaritans: Call 116 123

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