St. Louis Filmmaker’s Showcase: EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS

Experimental filmmaking lives and thrives in St. Louis. The EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS program plays Wednesday, July 21 at 7pm at the Tivoli as part of the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase and while we, as members of the general public, have a tendency to reward predicable entertainment with our ticket money, it’s often these unusual shorts that are the most satisfying. Since there is only one night of this type of programming at this year’s showcase, they’ve put all these experimental eggs in one basket, which encourages comparison and categorization. Several of these shorts reveal a fascination with movement and ritual while others are more straightforward. Some are hypnotic and beautiful avant-garde films, while others are pretentious dreck (that’s to be expected. Let’s hear it for pretentious dreck !). Jeffrey Chamberlin’s RHYTHM OF THE WALL, a 9-minute mood piece about teen suicide, and Zach Ginnever’s PANTOMINE, about a mysterious mime and a young boy, are mini narratives, while others are abstracts. Van McElwee’s CAPITOL OF THE MULTIVERSE is 9 minutes of stills and drawings of domed capitol buildings morphing into one another, or “A neoclassical form breathes and mutates, overlooking a shifting horizon” as he puffs it up on the Cinema St. Louis website. VERSAILLES VIDEO directed by R D Zurick, runs 12 minutes and is “part of an ongoing series of single-site explorations that move in and out of abstract territory”, Zurick’s film explores the Palace of Versailles in France using multiple image layering, reverse motion, and visual ruptures to turn the tourist Chateau into kaleidoscopic patterns. The EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS is an 11-film program that runs 88 minutes and none of the films run long enough to wear out their welcome. Their quality may vary but the enjoyment is in the eye and taste of the viewer and they defy standard criticism. To me there were two highlights: COMATOSE was about a young woman recalling life and love while lying bruised and bandaged in a hospital room. Andria Holtzman wrote, directed, starred and composed the score for this very nicely-done short. But my favorite of the group was Mike Pagano’s 13-minute goof CHICKEN AND WAFFLES. “Reporting from the intersection of food politics and public art”, this berserk mini-doc deceptively demonstrates three ways to slaughter a chicken quickly and humanely yet it’s the most complex of these films. It’s killing chickens as performance art and the most elaborate surrealist romp of the bunch. EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS is a highly recommended evening for those curious to see what adventurous St. Louis filmmakers are up to.

EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS plays at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase at 7pm Wednesday July 21 at the Tivoli Theatre.