Cynthia Felando

This might be the most recognisable short film on the planet. It’s definitely one of the most beloved. Since it premiered at Cannes in 1956, viewers of all ages have appreciated its simple story and visual beauty. About a little boy who discovers a gorgeous red balloon tethered to a light post and rescues it. Then, when the balloon reveals it has a life of its own, the two pal around together for a couple of days in Paris. Their loyalty to each other is fierce, until the bitter and then hopeful ending, which reporters said brought tears to the eyes of those who first saw it at Cannes.

Charles Burnett is one of the most significant, exciting, and influential filmmakers in American film history. He’s the best known of the UCLA film school graduates associated with the groundbreaking 1970s ‘L.A. Rebellion’ film movement. This is his first short, made as a film student, and it was inspired by European New Wave and Italian Neorealist filmmakers. Friends was shot in Burnett’s old neighborhood (in South Central Los Angeles), with non-professional actors – his friends and relatives, and it shows lives that had never been represented with such intimacy and detail. It’s neorealist, immensely authentic, and improvised quite a bit of the time. It meanders from moment to moment and place to place, like real life, for the friends – three young men with tons of charm and camaraderie as they hang out, tease and trash talk each other, try to fix a car, try to move a washing machine, and mostly just spending the day together. 

Made while New Zealander Jane Campion was a university film student in Australia, Peel won the short film Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1986. The dysfunctional family at the offbeat center of what a title card says is ‘A True Story’ with ‘A True Family’, consists of adult brother and sister, Tim and Katie, who are together on a road trip with Tim's son Ben. A fragment of their dysfunctional family life shows the absurd duel that quickly develops between father and son when Ben throws bits of his orange peel onto the side of a litter-filled road. High-strung Tim stops to insist, irrationally and viciously, that Ben pick them up, after which shifting alliances between the trio reach low-key crazy proportions, which is emphasized with an off-kilter combination of extreme close ups and deep-space shots. The film’s oddly compelling and completely unexpected power plays don’t exactly endorse the family ideal. 

Two Cars is a coming-of-age art short that captures the power of the passing moment. An Academy Award nominee from New Zealand, it was written and directed by the now-legendary Taiki Waititi, who noted in the film's press kit that he wanted to feature a moment in which ‘an unexpected joy is found in the everyday, a moment of beauty in the ordinary’. A pretty dry comedy, with a spare narrative and clever dialogue, it uses a single location and lush, high contrast black and white cinematography for a semi-autobiographical story of a chance meeting that leads to a brief relationship. One night, as two brothers in one car and a girl alone in another wait outside a rural pub for their parents, they strike up a friendship, despite the eldest boy’s (he’s nine) opening lines to the girl: ‘Oi ugly. Hey girl. Oi, ugly girl’. While their parents get drunk inside the pub, the kids pass the time teasing and getting to know each other. Two Cars has much visual dynamism with inventive cinematography (still and mobile), editing, and rhythm, including several angles, distances, and focal lengths for shots of the car and pub, along with some great time-lapse sequences too.

A surreal slice-of-life short about the dangers of shaving(!), it conveys Scorsese’s pitch black sense of humor. There’s no dialogue, only the sound of Bunny Berrigan’s song ‘I Can’t Get Started’, as a young man enters a pristine, shiny white bathroom and begins to shave – and doesn’t stop until he’s removed more than hair. It’s oddly funny and nightmarish, and evokes Hitchcock’s Psycho. Lots of interpretations are possible, but many critics read the young man's shaving to the point of destruction as suggestive of the bloody and futile involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War (a reading prompted by the film's alternative title). 

Made while Coogler was a film student at University of Southern California, it has a simple but unexpected story, and uses dialogue sparingly. It begins with a young man in Oakland, California, as he awakens in the morning and heads out through the neighborhood until he reaches the local barbershop. Along the way, he encounters neighbors and sees police rousting them, which adds considerable tension. At the barber shop, he makes the dramatic choice to cut his hair. There’s a surprise ending that’s beautiful and touching. 

A Jury Prize winner at Cannes, Gasman is one of Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s brilliant shorts. Its subtle story is largely presented from the perspective of a little girl, Lynne, introduced in a series of loosely composed, fragmented shots in her working- class home, as she happily dresses for an outing with her father and brother while a Christmas tune quietly plays on the radio. After walking some distance, they arrive at a spot on the train tracks where a mother and her two children are waiting for them. Taking the children along, the father and kids go to a Christmas party where initially wary Lynne becomes friends with the little girl and, as the evening progresses, there are revelations that suggest nothing will ever be the same again. The film's many strengths include its quiet rhythms and beautiful cinematography, and the narrative’s refusal to judge the characters, and the thoughtful, unsentimental representation of the children.

The legendary Agnes Varda’s enchanting almost-documentary film about her first-ever meeting with her sweet uncle who lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, and who’s very eccentric and a true artist. His house is welcome to a bunch of young hippies, whom he takes sailing on a colorful, quirky boat. Agnes is often present on-screen, including during their staged first meeting, which is hilarious and shot several times, and at a dinner with his many friends that Yanco has in her honor. There’s tons of chemistry between these two as they get to know each other and spend a few days together. Yanco has the heart of a counterculture artist and he’s pretty irresistible – and he seems to have been game for anything.

A wildly original short with an odd and unpredictable combination of terror and dark comedy that parodies the convention of integrated musicals, in which performers are inspired by the spirit of life to break into song and dance. In this odd slice-of-life, the setting is a café where people in the midst of their morning routines are interrupted by a customer who unexpectedly begins to sing and dance. Soon, he is joined by the other café patrons, whom he has apparently forced to sing and dance. During the performance, several outrageous things are revealed and tension builds to chaotic, explosive proportions. Fantastic use of off-screen sound for a perfect short film surprise ending. Although it’s a musical, instead of being brightly colored like a conventional Hollywood musical, it uses rich black and white cinematography.

A crazy-things-happen-in-the-woods scenario that’s dark and unpredictable – and terribly funny. It’s a virtuoso one-location, continuous-time gem of simplicity and beautiful, classical compositions with painterly cinematography – and it packs a punch in its wonderfully short running time. Two public school girls face off in a duel that’s very quietly, seriously, and properly conducted. There are only four lines of dialogue, and the last one is brilliantly and comically ironic. It’s a genius short and every shot is perfect; the last one, a wide shot, is also also wicked in a deliciously Lanthimos way.