Lineup for the Flickerfest International Short Film Festival
International Program 1 (the one I'm seeing tomorrow)
'Tragic Story With A Happy Ending (Historia Tragica Com Final Feliz)' (Portugal, Canada, France) sounds very promising:
Some people are different against their will. Their only wish is to be equal to others, deliciously mixing with the crowds. There are people spending their lives fighting to achieve this, denying or hiding their differences...
'Sniffer' (Norway), by description only, seems to verge on the ridiculous but could be very good:
In a society where everyone has the ability to fly, the citizens anchor themselves to the ground via "gravitation boots". Devoid of sunlight and the open sky, the members of society go about their routine without any hope of personal gratification. One day, however, a man decides he has had enough attempt to challenge the status quo. He quits his job, loosens his bindings, and literally takes off.
'Pen-pusher' (French) has a synopsis of intriguing brevity:
An unexpected spark of hope in the ordinary grey Paris metro.
Likewise 'Booth Story' (Australia):
A story of loneliness in an underground car park and one small miracle.
...or at least, it would be intriguingly brief if it were not for the fact that I have already read reviews of it, and encouragin ones at that. It apparently features wonderfully precise camarawork, only one human actor, and a duck (or rather 8 ducks, substituted at different ages for different scenes). Any film in which the ducks outnumber the human actors has got to be interesting.
'It's in the Air' (France) - I can't actually decipher this synopsis, so it makes me want to see it all the more:
An unusual run between a messenger and a song.
Altogether, these (and others) make up 100 minutes, a good chunk of time to immerse myself in something distracting that isn't my printer breaking down or another damn webcomic (I am not insulting webcomics here, merely the degree of tedium in my life that compels me to read webcomic archives for a large portion of the day).
Reviews, therefore, probably to follow.
International Program 2 (Saturday night, vague chance I might go to it as well)