Known to be the Haiku of Cinema, short films are especially well known for the story behind the short film seen. These films (original motion pictures) which do not run for more than 40 minutes fall under different categories such as drama, humour, emotion; anything that can grasp the attention of the audience.
These films have been given the Academy Awards, popularly known as Oscars since 1929, the time of its inception at a dinner party hosted by American actor, director & producer – Douglas Fairbanks in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
The First Academy Awards ( Oscar Awards ) https://youtu.be/vJv38K0mrRo via @YouTube
However, the exchange of these awards is not exactly a new phenomenon as a result of the cinematic affect found in the Lumiere brother’s films or even Georges Melies’ trick films, known for A Trip to the Moon.
These awards bestow the artistic and technical merit in the film industry and are given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and are known to be the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and continues to be seen live. They were broadcast on radio in 1930 and later in 1953 on television. Its equivalents are known as the Emmy Awards for television, the Grammy Awards for Music and the Tony Awards for theatre
Short Films convey a profound story, bringing out the essence of an issue. For instance in 20 minute heart-warming and funny Mazhabi Laddoo(short film) that was directed by an actor and production manager,Ssaurabh Tyagi from Ghaziabad the film really maps out a struggle a boy goes through to understand why his wish to eat religious offerings (prasad) is seen as an unhinged desire by his family – particularly one that is akin to sin or gunah.
They have mainly sprung up owing to the unconventional way of thinking – i.e. the shorter attention span of the audience and as a result of the arrival of the digital medium.
Some of the most famous Indian film short film production houses include Large Short Films, Purple Movies Original and GoBindaas Movies. Almost every single film director and producer has got his hands in the game – making them such as Mira Nair, Anurag Kashyap, Sujoy Ghosh, Anusha Bose, Ankoosh Bhatt, Jyothi Kapur Das, Imtiaz Ali, Amit Kumar, Digvijay Chauhan; just to name some of them.
Tropfest is the world’s largest short film festival and has become known to be the world’s first global film festival which takes place in Australia (its birthplace) and has spread to the US, Arabia and elsewhere.
Shorter time spans, fraction of the budget, engaging plots, fresh faces and original content are some of the feasible factors making it work so well for the audience and filmmakers. In current times, it is spurred by the paucity of the viewer’s time, which drives the trend. The present short film aesthetics are a crossover of the traditional modes of cinematic modes of cinematic storytelling and the new school of television production.
There are always emerging platforms, a growing demand for new and fresh content, new audiences and a short film festival or a submission deadline for a short film festival every year.
Some of these include Manhattan Short India in Mumbai, the Shankar Nag Short Film Festival in Bangalore, the Asian American Film International Film Festival in New York, the Green Era in Kerela, the Rolling Reels Short Film Festival, etc. The International Festival of Very Shorts that is based in Paris is meant only for those films that are less than three minutes long. Filminute is the international one-minute film festival that is dedicated to promoting, presenting and awarding some of the worlds best one-minute films.
Some of the online platforms that lure audiences to their sites for short films include Terrible Tiny Tales, Pocket Films, YouTube, Large Short Films, Humara Movie, Hot Star and several others.
Almost all the film directors have acted in them as well as directed them. Konkena Sen Sharma has directed a short (Naamkaran) apart from performing in them. So has Irrfan in Bypass, Naseeruddin Shah in Interior Café Night, Manoj Bajpayee in Tandaav and Ouch (which was directed by Neeraj Pandey) and Nawazuddin Siddique in Bypass.
Anusha Bose – the director of short film Shame opinionated that the medium does not matter although most of the short films are consumed on laptops and smart-phones.
“It derives from television as there are more close-ups and it is a bit more intimate. But cinematic element just does not mean that it has to have a large or extra large canvas with more headroom to register as grand. There are many ways to do that. To get the feel of cinema, it has to be true to the moment it creates. The feelings with the actor should be epic and you know as a director that which thing in a frame has to be epic,” says actress & producer Anusha Bose.
During recent times, there have been some really thought-provoking productions that have come to the forefront. They can leave you amused, speechless, introspective or simply nostalgic.
Some of them include:
- The Gatekeeper directed by Atanu Mukherjee
- Afterglow directed by Kaushal Oza (Multilingual)
- Paroksh directed by Ganesh Shetty (Tulu)
- Palloty directed by Jithin Raj (Malayalam)
- Debi –directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury (Bengali)
- The God Must be Crazy directed by Jayashankarr (Telegu)
- Saknoia directed by Khanjan Kishore Nath (Assamese)
- Aai Shapat directed by Gautam Vaze (Marathi)
- The Affair directed by Surrya M Narayanan (Tamil)
- Ambani- The Investor directed by Vinod Nag (Kannada)
- Mohotu directed by Vijaygiri Bava (Gujarati)
- Stranger in my Land directed by Duyu Tabyo (Multilingual)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0krwKbsQscw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sVfaxRKGMk
HOW? WHEN DID THIS ALL HAPPEN?
Although it cannot accurately be said (the exact date) when cinema actually started – the commercial and public screenings of ten of the Lumiere brothers short films in Paris on 28th December 1895 can safely be said to be the breakthrough of the projection of cinematographic motion pictures. These films were mainly documentary views, or “actualities,” shot outdoors on location. contained little or no narrative content.
This Lumière technology became the European standard during the early primitive era, and, as a result of the Lumières sending their cameramen all over the world in search of exotic subjects this cinématographe became the founding instrument of distant cinemas in Australia, Japan and Russia.
Approximately around the same time - a professional photographer and English inventor – William Friese-Green is known to be the pioneer in the field of motion rtpictures having created a series of proto-type-cameras during the period of 1888-1981. He is believed to have shot moving pictures in London and even created a two-color filming process.
Thomas Edison, an American inventor was well known for having invented the phonograph – a sound-producing machine (gramophone) that used cylinders to record and reproduce sound.
The earliest films were in black and white and were less then one minute long – recorded without any sound at all! This then changed to a few minutes long including several shots and several effects such as film continuity. They were just in their nascent stages and were moving right from their novelty to an established mass entertainment industry.
They were produced using a device called a kinetoscope, which was however made for individual usage only. Gradually, films became longer – several minutes longer and then using special effects.
Some of the earliest films included D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation and short comedies such as those of Charlie Chaplin. Most of the films that were made during this period were known as chase films – a term used where the primary plot a race or chase is the primary story element.
Many different film techniques were introduced such as fire effects, articial lighting and low-key lighting (lighting in most of the frame is dark) for enhanced atmosphere during sinister scenes.
The ability to see short films online (via internet) through different online platforms has made it possible for international exposure to over 70 million home! In Mumbai, the Lumiere Brothers are known to have had their first short films screening at the Watsons Espionage Hotel.
These included Entry of A Cinematographe, Arrival of a Train, The Sea Bath, A Demolition, Leaving the Factory, and Ladies and Soldiers on Wheel. This was 17 years before the Father of Indian Cinema Dhundiraj G Phalke alse Dadasaheb Phalke made his first full feature length film “Raja Harishchandra” (1913) marking the birth of the world’s biggest film industry Bollywood.
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