Aspen Film’s annual “Shortsfest” is one of the only Oscar-qualifying festivals in the country dedicated to short films — and next week, it returns to the Wheeler Opera House with 79 films at 11 different screening programs.
The festival begins with a youth forum at the Aspen District Theatre on Monday, April 10, then screenings run Tuesday through Sunday at the Wheeler Opera House. Single-screening tickets are on sale at aspenshowtix.com.
Before the festival begins, Kaya Williams spoke with Shortsfest Program Director Jason Anderson to learn more about the lineup.
Kaya Williams: So we're looking at a really robust list of programming here: 70-plus films, 11 different programs — I'd love for you to start by just lending some insight on how you choose these films and how you both narrow it down and and flesh it out, so to speak, to reach the sweet spots.
Jason Anderson: I think when you're dealing with as many films as we get for Shortsfest — I mean, nearly 3,000 this year — it's a problem of abundance, because there's so many more great films than we have room to play. Even with 11 programs and 79 films, there's still a lot of amazing films that we just run out of room for, because it really is such a wealth of talent from every corner of the globe, and we're so excited to get this work from filmmakers from countries that maybe have a lot of support for filmmakers and films, and places that don't have that. And we're always trying to get a balance of films from all over the world and from all kinds of circumstances.
But in terms of what we play, it's kind of what you end up falling in love with. But also, you just want to make sure that these are things that kind of fit together and are really just sort of surprising and unique and fresh and compelling, whatever they are — whether it's something kind of, maybe, slow and sad or sort of bright and funny — and that everything kind of feels exactly as it should, whatever it wants to do or wants to be.
You have all these, sort of, tones and colors and kinds of films, you can sort of put together and create these programs, these individual screenings, which I always hope make some kind of sense together, even if the films can be very, very different from each other.
Williams: I remember, last year, I went to a Shortsfest screening and one was kind of this black comedy about someone who gets eaten by a shark. And then the next was like, an animated representation of anxiety with no dialogue whatsoever. So you raise a great point there: There's a lot of variety in these. But are different programs oriented around particular themes or ideas — like if someone is really interested in X, they should go to Program 11, for instance?
Anderson: I think if there are themes, they're kind of subtle ones, I think, because we'd like to kind of keep things really kind of diverse and surprising. I mean, it depends. Certainly you get stories that sort of fit together. Maybe they’re stories about people living experiences as young people, as children; certainly you get combinations of different family stories, for instance.
The themes tend to be more subtle ones, I think, which is the way we like it. I think it's better for the films, for them to be different. But at the same time, you do kind of get things that go together. You realize, like, ‘Oh, I have all of the films about people on the beach together,’ or just kind of subconscious connections that kind of lead you to sort of pair material together.
And the one thing that we do have on the final Sunday is a family program, which is basically our stuff that’s sort of most appropriate to the sort of widest range of ages. And I think in terms of content, maybe it kind of feels a little more family oriented in the earlier screenings, and then maybe a little edgier in the nighttime ones. But even then, you know, there's always curveballs, which we like to do.
Williams: Can you lend a little bit of insight as to how these films get rated by juries and audience members during this festival?
Anderson: Being a judge for these shorts, it really is like apples and oranges and kiwis and various other kinds of fruit because they're really very different films. And the challenge is just sort of for them to decide what kind of feels like the thing that they're most excited about, or the most accomplished, but it's never easy.
You know, all these films have their own merits and lives and, and certainly there's already films, I think, there's quite a few films that have already had big awards. Sometimes, you know, they decide that there really is, you know, a cream of the crop [that] deserves all the accolades, but I'm really excited to see what their reactions will be.
