Show Us Your Shorts 48-Hour Movie Making Challenge cater to fans of brief cinema
Short film enthusiasts (or just folks with generally short attention spans) this is the weekend for you: The second annual Show Us Your Shorts film festival takes place from Thursday March 25 through Saturday March 27 at the Plaza Theatre and Emmedia. A celebration of all things brief the fest features animated and live-action shorts from as nearby as Calgary and as far-flung as the Czech Republic — an impressive feat for an event that’s only in its second year. Catch most of the shorts at Friday’s free Emmedia screening check out the (fully licensed) awards gala at the Plaza on Saturday and elasticize your attention span with Thursday’s opening night of ultra-short films and the debut feature from Hedwig and the Angry Inch art director Emily Hubley. Check out showusyourshorts.ca for more details.
If all those shorts have your creativity revved up you might want to take part in the Calgary Underground Film Festival’s annual 48-Hour Movie Making Challenge which runs from March 26 to 28. Budding filmmakers will be given a randomly chosen genre prop and line of dialogue that must make their way into the finished film and then the race is on — whatever you can pull together in a two-day burst of fevered filmmaking will be judged and then screened at the festival on Monday April 12. No one will blame you if you’re feeling a bit of déjà vu from the Super-8 Filmmaker’s Challenge a few weeks ago but any chance to flex those creative muscles is worth pursuing.
For the usual decidedly more passive type of movie watching there are still a couple of options. On the more serious side you have Fish Out of Water which screens at Hillhurst United Church on Friday March 26. Part of the Fairy Tales Presentation Society’s Reels on Wheels series the documentary looks at the long and awkward relationship between homosexuality and the Bible — not exactly popcorn viewing but certainly worth taking in.
On the more ridiculous side the new John Cusack comedy Hot Tub Time Machine opens wide this Friday March 26 and if you haven’t watched the red-band trailers online you owe it to yourself. Ridiculous premise aside if the end result is half as funny as it looks it could be this year’s The Hangover .
