Sheffield Short Film Festival 2020
This year marked the launch of Sheffield Short Film Festival, founded by Joe Morris and Louise Marie Cooke. Their aim was to celebrate new and establish filmmakers from around the globe and share the magic of storytelling through the time-honoured format of short films. Taking place online like many festivals of 2020, our team were able to enjoy a wonderful range of short films and have shared their thoughts on some of their favourites below from the women and non binary film makers in the selection.
Absent
Absent (Dir. Libby Burke Wilde).
Absent follows teenager Chloe, a normal British schoolgirl, and her mother, as they face period poverty like so many others in the UK.
Chloe has had to make do with toilet paper in the place of menstrual hygiene products, when a boy at her school approaches her to tell her she has bled through her trousers. Chloe thinks back over her day, and the choice she had to make upon discovering her mother couldn’t afford sanitary products, however is met with kindness from her peer, who assures her it has happened to his sister too. The film captured the real-life stigma and shame that people who menstruate face, and the shocking percentage of them who either miss school or cannot afford the necessary products each month; 49% of girls in the UK have missed a day of school due to their period; and as the film sheds light on, 40% have used toilet roll because they cannot afford proper menstrual products.
Despite being a short film, Absent captured the UK secondary school experience and poverty in Britain convincingly, and sadly, I expect it will resonate with a lot of viewers.
Written by Larissa Hird.
Towards a Better Birth
Towards a Better Birth (Dir. Everdien Wood).
Towards a Better Birth, created by Everdien Wood and Professor Susan Hogan explores The Birth Project, a series of workshops ran as part of a research project at the University of Derby. The Birth Project focuses upon improving labour and birth experiences for women, as well as medical staff and birthing partners, and the footage captured is incredibly honest, emotive, and sometimes funny.
The film and the women who contributed talk about the expectation versus reality of birth in hospitals in the United Kingdom, with the goal of improving childbirth and maternity care for mothers. One mother, who works in a medical background, recounts how shocked she was during her labour when a C-Section was carried out without any prior discussion with her. Others spoke about the violation and trauma they experienced, both physical and psychological.
The Birth Project runs multiple groups and workshops, where both mothers and maternity staff can use art, or even just the safe space, to share their experiences and emotions, and discover which areas need the most improvement or change. Towards a Better Birth is a raw and emotional documentation of the real people and babies involved.
Written by Larissa Hird.
Gay As In Happy
Gay As In Happy, (Dir. Jordana Valerie Allen-Shim)
Jordana Valerie Allen-Shim’s Gay As In Happy: A Queer Anti-Tragedy is bold and unapologetic from the get-go. A self-defining piece, this short offers visceral visual and aural responses to the effects of being misgendered via its filmmaking techniques. Close up shots feature mouths uttering the wrong pronouns, visuals are singled out through the shapes of the literal words ‘he’ and ‘him’, the sound of nails grating on a chalkboard are used to articulate the discomfort and pain of constantly hearing your identity disregarded.
“I am a transgender woman and I am valid” is spoken assuredly in the film. This proud statement comes not only from the voice of the narrator, who is also both the writer and director, but also a selection of others from within the queer community; affording an intrinsically personal film with a sense of universality - signalling to this being a shared experience. Melded with positive affirmations of selfhood are beautiful shots of unapologetically happy queer love. Styling itself as an ‘queer-anti-tragedy’, the film spins the tragic occurrence in one queer person’s life into a beautiful experimental short film about self-love and community. It crafts a careful balance between the personal and the universal.
Filmmaking and identity are neatly woven together in this experimental short. “Fuck you to the people that misgender me”, the narration states, whilst the visuals echo a similar ‘fuck you’ to the practice of filmmaking. Aesthetically the film is disorderly, with fast-paced editing and a narration that feels like a stream of consciousness. It’s experimental in form, which inherently goes against hegemonic filmmaking practices anyway, and it’s cinematically basic form (most likely filmed with amateur equipment and featuring home-made props) proclaims ‘fuck you!’ to the expectations of what filmmaking should be. Filmmaking is art - it’s identity and a way to define a sense of self. It's personal but universal, it’s quiet and it's loud. It is something to define yourself and its most effective examples are as unapologetic as this film.
Written by Lilia Pavin-Franks
A Dunder Plunder
A Dunder Plunder, (Dir. Grace Alwyn Ashworth)
In A Dunder Plunder, a woman seeks relationship advice from a burglar. The balaclava-ed robber thought he was breaking into the woman’s wealthy husband’s house, only to find that the couple has separated and he’s gone – it’s just her, her glass of wine, and the Nora Ephron movie on her laptop (“Sorry, I don’t usually cry like this. I was watching Sleepless in Seattle,” she says, apologetically, to the man who has broken into her house). The only thing worth stealing is the woman’s phone – but she’s waiting for a text back. The burglar brings her a box of tissues and comforts her awkwardly, and she agrees to give him a head start before she calls the police. Part of the festival’s ‘We ‘Ave A Laugh’ strand, A Dunder Plunder is an understated, amusing film with perfect comic timing – it’s thoroughly enjoyable.
Written by Emily Garbutt
Something In The Closet
Something In The Closet, (Dir. Nosa Eke)
Nosa Eke’s BFI and Film London funded Something In The Closet has been a hit on the festival circuit and it’s not hard to see why. Showing at LFF 2019, BFI Flare 2020, Aesthetica Film Festival 2020 and of course this year’s Sheffield Shorts, this short has asserted a presence in British Filmmaking that cannot be ignored.
It’s a well known filmic trope to play with unknown or undiscovered desires and manifested monsters. Usually this is in a very Freudian sense and under a very obvious umbrella of the horror genre. This film, however, toys with it, exploring a more playful side to manifested desires. It’s still eerie and unsettling, but in a more relatable way and really aligns itself to what forms of terror one may feel as an adolescent.
One of the film’s strongest characteristics is its beautiful subtlety. So much is said with hands in the first minute or so; the linking of fingers as two girls shyly get closer to each other in a game of ‘Spin the Bottle’, the counting on the fingers to make sure the kiss counts in this game, the grin and playful bite of the finger as our protagonist revels in the moment of young love. The film also features a really effective use of sound and score that effortlessly switches between dreamlike and nightmare-inducing to reflect the emotional turmoil of the protagonist.
Something in the Closet is a really unique approach to the concept of ‘being in the closet’ and how it feels to come to terms with your sexuality as a young woman, surrounded by a female-friendship group. Its closing scenes feature a tender discussion between two of the friends, with one simply consoling the other by saying “It’s OK”. A seemingly rudimental affirmation, but one that holds so much weight when you’re forming your own sense of identity. With these two words, our protagonist is able to confront her inner demons of self-doubt and judgement and be her true self without limits.
Written by Lilia Pavin-Franks
Stand Still
Stand Still, (Dir. Isabella Wing-Davey)
Stand Still, directed by Isabella Wing-Davey and nominated for Best UK Short Film at the Sheffield Short Film Festival, is a heartbreaking slice of cinema. The short follows Susannah (Zoë Tapper), a new mother to a tiny newborn baby. She spends her days at home, alone with her baby, while her husband David (Paapa Essiedu) goes to work each day.
Most women quickly bond to their newborns, having a natural and unconditional love for their children. That doesn’t happen to Susannah and it worries her. Actress Zoë Tapper conveys Susannah’s helplessness beautifully. She looks to be constantly on the verge of a breakdown, tears welling in her eyes and her body tensing up each time her baby cries. She feels overwhelmed and doesn’t know what to do. Being with the baby, leaving him alone, nothing works for Susannah and it’s driving her to the brink. Stand Still takes a turn for the worse when Susannah leaves her baby alone in their home and runs to a footbridge over a motorway.
Wing-Davey’s Stand Still is a sublime story of post-partum depression. The film is a message to new mothers that it’s okay to ask for help. Susannah feels so helpless because she doesn’t think she should be allowed to ask for help, she believes that she should just know how to be a mother. After her chance encounter with Rupa (Michelle Bonnard), Susannah begins to understand this and stops putting so much pressure on herself. Wing-Davey’s film tells women that not having motherly instincts and feeling upset and alone after a baby is born is normal and okay. Taking care of a baby should not entirely fall on the mother, it’s okay to reach out and ask for help.
Written by Alina Faulds
To view all of the selection of the 2020 festival, head over to their website here.
Edited by Holly Dryden, Caris Rianne.
