Small Pleasures: Scottish Shorts at EIFF 2014

Showcasing the fruits of a Creative Scotland-funded initiative led by production companies DigiCult and Hopscotch, today’s Scottish Shorts screening has enticed a respectable crowd to the Filmhouse’s main cinema. While cast, crew and family seem to account for many of the occupied seats, there are also an encouraging number of non-affiliates, thanked at the start by EIFF deputy artistic director Diane Henderson for supporting and promoting local filmmaking talent.

First up is black-and-white animation Monkey Love Experiments, written and directed by Ainslie Henderson and Will Anderson. At the previous day’s award ceremony, the filmmakers were presented with the prize for Outstanding Individual Contribution to a Short Film, and it’s easy to see what had the jury so smitten. A poignant tale of a stargazing lab monkey in love with a cat scratcher and convinced he’s going to the Moon, the film is beautifully animated and full of nuance (for instance, the soft breeze that seems to gently agitate the would-be space-primate’s fur throughout, or the way his eyes expressively widen when contemplating the impending mission). There’s a lot of pathos and poignancy packed into its nine minutes, meaning that while Monkey Love Experiments is the briefest of today’s shorts, it’s also ultimately the most memorable.

Monkey Love Experiments trailer

Next is another prize-winner: Exchange and Mart, which bagged the Glasgow Short Film Festival Audience Award back in February. Having additionally played Sundance and Berlin, it’s the most travelled of the Scottish Shorts quintet, with its international profile no doubt abetted by the involvement of Ewen Bremner – stealing scenes as an unconventional self-defence tutor at a remote all-girls boarding school. Focussing the narrative on one of the school’s cloistered pupils, writer Cara Connelly (who also co-directs with fellow GSA-alum Martin Clark) sketches an open-ended tale of adolescent sexuality, during which dorm-room humour and vicarious thrills mix with various trepidations – from the threat of assault instilled by Bremner’s inappropriate teaching methods to the less severe anxiety of saying hello to a hot tree surgeon. It’s a distinctive and well-observed piece, and bodes well for Connelly and Clark’s future ventures.

Exchange and Mart

Like Exchange and Mart, Seagulls screened in competition at the Berlinale; also like Exchange and Mart, it presents a clear and persuasive filmmaking voice (in this case, one with heavy inflections of Loach, Arnold, Barnard and other luminaries of the British social-realist tradition). Drawing on research into travelling fairground communities that will ultimately form the basis of a feature-length film, writer-director Martin Smith selects from this under-examined subject a single, compelling strand: the internalised plight of a taciturn fairground teen trying to fit in, however temporarily, with the local kids. Placing a cast of young, first-time actors amid wind-whipped hillside locations, Smith teases tension from the group’s fluctuating rapport, and elicits impressively committed performances – not least in a scene that required lead Mikey Hoc to repeatedly plunge into a freezing river. If one function of the short film format is to act as a calling card (as is later suggested in the Q&A), then Seagulls is a successful appetiser for Smith’s long-form take on the material.

Seagulls

Compared with the opening trio, the final two shorts in today’s programme are slightly less impressive, yet nonetheless offer numerous points of recommendation. Filmed in the characterful Port O'Leith pub, Rory Alexander Stewart’s Wyld presents a shift-in-the-life of bar worker Julie, from doors-open to the wee small hours. In the lead role, BAFTA New Talent award-winner Julie Speers convinces with just the right balance of boredom and backchat, while a low-key script leaves plenty of space for interpretation – particularly in scenes featuring a progressively drunken customer whose precise relationship with Julie is left ambiguous. On the downside, a detached tone limits investment in the characters, while the Port’s small confines offer little scope for visual variety.

Wyld

Last up is As He Lay Falling, the most overtly politicised and ambitious of the five shorts. Unfortunately, writer/director Ian Waugh’s reach slightly exceeds his grasp, with themes of economic migration and national identity proving too weighty and unwieldy for the film’s 19-minute duration. That said, it barely flags thanks to striking cinematography from Julian Schwanitz – who handsomely captures the earthy beauty of Highland landscapes – and a talented cast, including Christopher Greco as haunted outsider Georgios, labouring for food and shelter in a remote croft while conducting a dispassionate affair with the crofter’s wife (played by Simone Lahbib). Ultimately, despite the occasional lapses into visual and verbal cliché (for instance, having someone mutter “bloody foreigners” as a way of conveying local hostility towards Georgios), As He Lay Falling is a thoughtful and accomplished work that sits comfortably on what is, overall, a strong bill of films – each of which deserves a life beyond the festival circuit that, for so many shorts, remains their primary – or only – platform.

As He Lay Falling