Loneliness, Desire, Love, Hesitation, Mis-communication, Fear, and Loss with a touch of alcoholism for comic relief. Trevor and Martha see each other across a dingy bar and fall in love. The couple's shyness is only overcome in a mutual dream where their shadows dance together. Inspired by the song "The Empress" by the Montreal band BRIGA, the film is about the first hesitant motions of meeting and the fragility of falling in love.
2010
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
18 minutes
Director:
Michael Frost
REIFF 2010
The Harvey Girl From Shanghai is a fictional short documentary about a film Orson Welles started to make with Judy Garland but was stopped mid-production. Told through a series of vintage interviews, missing footage and television reenactments, this short film explores a legendary Hollywood murder that may or may not have happened.
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
15 minutes
Director:
Michael Blair
REIFF 2010
An insecure and uncertain writer tries to draw a line between himself and his body, represented by a man in a bear suit. With the help of the bear, a medical student and his mostly imaginary crush, he re-evaluates his ideas about himself and finds even more reasons to be insecure and uncertain.
Animation
Korea (South)
Runtime:
14 minutes
Director:
Ryan Grobins
REIFF 2010
A young boy named Thomas accidentally finds a way to enter into a magical, fantastic, parallel world. He then meets up with a strange little talking creature who offers to help him get home, but who ultimately betrays Thomas in the end. On top of this, they are chased by a huge beast known as a mancor. Thomas must now fend for himself in getting back to his world before he is captured.
Documentary Short
New Zealand
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
2 minutes
Director:
Faramarz Beheshti
REIFF 2010
In 2004, the first women's rugby class was organized in Tehran. A few months later, Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. Over a 7000 kilometer journey, we meet some of the women who are trying to learn this new game, despite the Talibanization programs, introduced by the new president. Salam rugby is not only about rugby...
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
15 minutes
Director:
Bryan Litt
REIFF 2010
A young man returns from his mother's funeral expecting to resume the daily high school routine only to have the direction of his life changed by learning lessons in the power of both love and truth.
Experimental
United States
Runtime:
2 minutes
Director:
Deron Williams
REIFF 2010
A young man is violently displeased when he is confronted by a mirrored image of himself while WTOP's Bill Diehl gives us the unabashed mid-morning news.
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
33 minutes
Director:
Ben Hur Sepehr
REIFF 2010
On a rainy night near a concentration camp being bombed during the waning years of WWII, the son of a top-ranking and fearsome Nazi General is mortally wounded. With the camp's doctor having been transferred to the eastern front, the only doctor who is available to perform the life-saving surgery is a condemned, elderly Jewish inmate at the camp.
Upon summoning the man, the General commands the Jewish doctor to perform the surgery, but the doctor refuses, saying that he will not help his enemy to continue to massacre his own people. The General threatens the doctor's life, and the camp's Commandant is only too happy to oblige, but the doctor still replies that his life will end soon in the camp's ovens anyway. The General then offers freedom to the doctor if he cooperates. The doctor still refuses. The General then begs the doctor to save his only son, but the doctor then objects that the Nazis did not save his only son but hanged him for smuggling food in to starving ghetto children. Then all the General's hopes are dashed as the distant sounds of a prison train can be heard approaching the camp.
With the General at an impasse, he discovers that he must connect with the underlying humanity that connects them both as fathers before there is to be any hope for his son.
Documentary Short
United Kingdom
Runtime:
24 minutes
Director:
Adrienne Grierson
REIFF 2010
Imagine a Brazilian religious community numbering some 20,000 people where the inhabitants dress like a cross between characters in Star Trek and the Egyptians of 2,000 years ago. According to the doctrine, 32,000 years ago, a fleet of spacecraft arrived in South America from the planet Capela bearing an alien race. From this civilization came the spirit of Pai Seta Branca, who chose Tia Nieva, a female Brazilian truck driver to construct and complete a temple, lakes, shrines and, most importantly, an entire religion on 22 hectares of dusty ground in the middle of Brazil.
Adrienne leaves London to go and discover this outrageous community which manages to combine spirituality and glamour. Maybe she will be able to get a fabulous dress while she is there. She meets Genisvalda and Marlete. Marlete is the Queen of the Gypsy Group in the Valley. Genis is a seamstress. More than just the spectacle of pageantry and ritual that regularly fascinates Brazilians, Adrienne goes inside the religion, and through her blossoming friendships with these two women she learns about the extraordinary life of people who live in this Kingdom.
This is the story that will open your mind in a heartfelt and humorous way to the powerful, magical and unusual experiences that surround us daily. It is a beautifully shot film and opens us to the possibility that those things which we may perceive as too peculiar, outrageous and eccentric to understand may simply be wonderful.
Narrative Short
United Kingdom
Runtime:
10 minutes
Director:
Chiman Rahimi
REIFF 2010
Rojin is a maid at a chic hotel in London. When she overhears a hotel guest, memories of her past in Iran, a country she fled long ago, come rushing back. Finding herself In a position to wreak revenge on her torturer, Rojin must consider the ultimate question: Can she forgive if she can never forget? Kurdish women in Iran suffer abuse and a form of double-discrimination, due their ethnicity and their gender. Perpetrators of this abuse are rarely caught and even more rarely punished. Rojin is the latest short film from award-winning production company Poisson Rouge Pictures.