Opening Night Gala - Short Is Better

Thursday, October 3rd - 7:00 pm
Jackman Hall Map

Get Tickets Price: $15 CAD

Following the film program, please join us for a reception with drinks and nibbles at Art Square Gallery & Cafe, 334 Dundas St W. (directly across from the AGO)
*Access to reception is valid with film ticket stub*

*ALL FILMS WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES*
Regular screenings are restricted to those 18 years of age or older according to the Ontario Theatres Act.

Short Is Better

The entire point of a film festival is to expand one’s horizons, and see films in an environment unique from how we normally watch movies, so why not look at the short films? This program is a collection of hidden gems, and an opportunity to come away from the festival with an experience that’s truly rare. Breaking conventions and shattering expectations, these films are as bold as the unforgettable characters they portray... and the startling images they display.

Short films stand as a renovating format and offer a number of possibilities and with this program we aim to give this format all the prominence it deserves.

We love shorts!

Spanish

El corto es un formato casi invisible y ha quedado en un segundo plano respecto a largometrajes y documentales. Aun así podemos afirmar que el corto es un formato que requiere de mucho talento. Y es que en muchas ocasiones podemos ver una obra de quince minutos de mucha más calidad que en un largometraje de dos horas. No es sólo lo historia que cuentas, sino cómo lo dices. Con un corto, no se trata sólo de la idea grande. Se trata de la gran idea que puede ser contada de forma concisa creativa, innovadora y arriesgada.

Al optar por el cortometraje, el cineasta muchas veces consigue una ligera, curiosa y rica historia que no necesita alargarse. Asimismo, esta brevedad brinda al director la oportunidad de realizar nuevas experimentaciones y buscar nuevos caminos, siempre y cuando tenga libertad para poder trabajar sin las presiones de la industria. El cortometraje se erige como un formato renovador y de un sin número de posibilidades. Es por esto que en aluCine le queremos dar todo el protagonismo que se merece.

Este programa es parte del tributo que rendimos a ese formato arriesgado y maravilloso durante el Festival 2019.

Nos gustan cortos!

Maria de los estereos

Eugenio Gómez Borrero

2018 - Colombia - 19’ - Fiction, Drama

Selección oficial ficción 10 Festival de Cine Corto de Popayán 2018

The story of a woman who, while extracting oysters from a mangrove, also unearths memories, songs and ghosts. But the mangrove that once was a larder of life has become the cemetery of those who refuse to leave the territory.

Carlitos Leaves Forever

Quentin Lazzarotto

2019 - France/Peru - 15’ - Drama

Tribeca Film Festival

In the Amazonian jungle, the village of Palma Real resists the modern world. Carlito, a silent young man, decides to leave. On the muddy bed of the immense river, an encounter reveals the secret that Carlito has hidden from his community. A film whose images are revealed as a poem, shot and interpreted in the native language of the village, by the inhabitants. Film directed under the supervision of Werner Herzog.

La Bonita

Maria del Mar Rosario

2018 - Cuba/Puerto Rico - 18’ - Documentary

The beauty treatments women endure to fit normative feminine standards are violent in ways rarely recorded. La Bonita is an essential allegory about aesthetics that asks the audience to sit through a series of procedures, from fake nail removal to permanent makeup application to bikini waxing, and to sit with the accompanying pain that goes far beyond the physical.

And That Is How the Rivers Came To Be

Dir. Miguel Araoz Cartagena

2018 - Mexico, U.S.A - 4’ - Animation, Drama

A long time ago, before there were rivers in the Amazon rainforest, a Kukama God stood poised in his canoe, holding aloft his bow and arrows. The arrows fell one by one creating vast, winding rivers, which the Kukama people have navigated until modern times

Harina

Joanna Cristina Nelson

2019 -Venezuela - 15’ - Drama

Roberto is a middle-class working professional trying to survive Venezuela's economic death spiral and current humanitarian crisis while maintaining his unemployed mother. An argument breaks out when she asks him to buy flour for her birthday cake and he reprimands her for not being resourceful with what he provides. In an effort to make amends, he resorts to the black market to buy the scarce food item. But before heading back home he is faced with a moral dilemma.

Libre

Anna Barsan

2018 - U.S.A - Documentary Short. 12’

For detained immigrants who can’t pay their bond, for-profit companies like Libre by Nexus offer a path to reunite with their families. But for many, the reality is much more complicated. “Libre” sheds light on one of the many hidden costs of reunification for immigrant families.

Fin De (End Of)

Federico Cuatlacuatl

2014- Mexico, U.S.A - 3’ 29’ - Animation

Headwaters Film Festival
Athens Animfest
Festival Cine Alter'Natif
SISFF
imagineNative

Jacobo, a premature bird, desires to fly but his failed attempts are unknowingly watched by a mythological Aztec bird who has the power to grant Jacobo’s wish.