The 3rd Annual Big Sur International Short Film Screening  Series
June 12 – September 21, 2008

The Danish Poet

Winner 2008:
The Danish Poet
Director: Torill Kove, Norway

 

 

Official selection for the final screening:

Bitch - Lilah Vandenburgh 
The Torchbearer - Vaclav Svankmajer
Koest (Doggie) - Simone van Dusseldorp
Traumalogia - Daniel Sanchez Arevalo 
Anolit -  Stefan Faldbakken 
The Danish Poet - Torill Kove

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Thursday, June 12th

Love Hurts /Christian Simmons, USA Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars. Every 30 seconds, a human being is hit by Cupid’s heart shaped arrows. If this is not stopped, you could be the next one. Think about it. Love Hurts.

The Runt / Director, Andreas Hykade, Germany The Runt appears to be a deceptively simple film, but rumbling beneath are a variety of deep and emotional themes ranging from loss of innocence, ritual, responsibility and death.

Shahram & Abbas / Remy Van Heugten, Netherlands Two Iranian men pretend to be gay in order to obtain asylum in The Netherlands.

Barbara Broadcast /Jean-Julien Collette/Olivier Tollet, Belgium Two friends telling each other stories find themselves stuck in a room from which they cannot escape. A strange will disease gradually overcomes them and they can’t figure out why.

June 19th

Intervention / Jay Duplass, USA An awkward film hovering between funny and painful. The acting is tremendous, almost unbelievable. The film starts with a simple admission by the lead character to several of his friends that his Bill Parcell’s story was a lie. But the intervention doesn’t stop there…

Boletos Por Favor (Tickets Please)/ Lucas Figueroa, Spain A train, a pursuit and only one way to escape.

The Torchbearer / Vaclav Svankmajer, Czech Republic We can see a Town with an extensive Labyrinth. Day and Night alternate above the Town and Labyrinth, and the Sun and Moon revolve in a seemingly never-ending cycle. Suddenly the machine grinds to a halt and stops working. An endless night sets in…

Elemenopee / Natalia Amoore, Australia A sellout writer is terrorized by strange messages on his fridge. He has a way with words but now they’ll have their way with him.

Verschlossen / Albert Radl, Germany While walking out Arthur finds a mysterious door and tries to go through, but it’s locked. First, just curious, step by step he becomes angry. Will he finally open the door? Maybe he will, but…

 

July 17th

Taxi? / Telmo Esnal, Spain This city’s cab drivers have taken a course on kindness. But if you don’t make the grade, you won’t arrive at your destination.

True Colours / Barney Elliott, UK A social drama about a loving father with a propensity for violence and his struggle to earn his family’s trust.

Rosalie & Bruno / Katharina Nobis, Germany Bruno, a young man in his late 20s, has a big fight with his girlfriend Nathalie,is then threatened by a droll old lady with a gun and kidnapped by her. As if the confusion were not big enough, this is followed by a breaking into an undertaker’s, a theft of a coffin and a trip to a crematorium of an open cemetery in the woods near Bremen…

Coco-Nuts / Charlotte Blom, Norway Fiction, documentary, music, and cake batter are just a few of the random ingredients thrown into this playfully absurd romantic encounter.

Bitch / Lilah Vandenburgh, USA BITCH (Keira Leverton) is a pop-culture vigilante, who administers beat-downs to many deserving folk. Be it your pretentious taste in music, your fugly clothes, your insipid pseudo-intellectual rantings, or your poseur attitude, she will find you and she will make you pay.

Thursday, July 24

I Fucking Hate You / Zak Forsman, USA A raw, compelling glimpse into a young man’s charmingly ill-conceived scheme to redeem himself in the eyes of his ex-girlfriend. Ron (John T. Woods) lures Carol (Marion Kerr) back to his apartment under the pretense that he is going to return her favorite mug. When it seems this will be their last moment together, Ron desperately maneuvers to strike a chord with her in his own uniquely heartfelt way.

Tom & Gry / Jarl Holstad, Norway “You want true love? Look for a mountain of cynicism and an ocean of innocence. What the hell baby, we’re perfect.” – Robert Mitchum,”The Blue Mask”

The Kolaborator / Chris Bessounian, USA During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia many soldiers were convinced to kill fellow citizens including friends and relatives in the name of patriotism. The Kolaborator follows the story of Goran, 24, a promising young soccer player who is forced to become a soldier.

Private Life / Abbe Robinson, UK Yorkshire, England 1952. Ruth Ackroyd leaves the monotony of her work at her father’s textile mill on a Friday evening and secretly takes the train to Manchester. There, she meets a man on the platform, but all is not what it seems.

Traumalogia / Daniel Sanchez Arevalo, Spain At the wedding of Antonio, the eldest of a five-sibling family, his father has a heart-attack. The wedding is interrupted and the whole family goes to the hospital, where all the traumas and miseries appear during a tense night wait.

July 31st

The Trainee / Craig Rosenthal, Singapore A first time robber is no match for the unpredictable night shift at a 24 hour convenience store

Ezekiel’s Revelation / Katherine Sharp, USA Ezekiel Lewis is a twelve-year-old boy growing up in Tennessee’s Bible Belt region. When his extremely religious parents are “visited by God”, they decide to give up everything they own and move to a trailer park in Florida to attend Bible College.

.3 – 8 / Sébastien Aubanel, France Robert Duval works in a gas station. So does his wife. So does his son. Which means the gas station is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Though at night nobody ever…

Salvador / Abdelatif Hwidar, Spain A child playing hide and seek with his father on a crowded train triggers unexpected consequences for all the passengers aboard.

August 7th

Der Aufreisser / Steffen Weinert, Germany Olli only wants to have noncommittal sex but that becomes difficult when he meets the 6 year-old daughter of his one-night stand.

The Pocket Thief / Scott Mann, UK Greg spends his life as a lonely pick pocket, stealing to substitute the love he misses from growing up without his mother, who was arrested and taken away for the same crime when Greg was a child.

Iron Bird / Chris Richards-Scully, Australia Iron Bird takes us on one of the most destructive missions of WWII, the bombing of Dresden, circa February 1945. For a young Australian Lancaster bomber crew it’s another dangerous mission, but for Flight Sgt. Jonathan Paul Harmer (JP) it is a personal vendetta.

The Danish Poet / Torill Kove, Norway To illustrate happenstance, a woman narrates the story of how her parents met. It begins in a small apartment in Copenhagen, where a Danish poet worries that he’ll run out of ideas. He loves the work of Sigrid Undset, so his psychiatrist suggests he visit her in Norway to talk about writing.

August 14th

The Dear Hunter / Ryan Storm, Canada / USA A hunter finds a surprise in the forest.

L’Etoile de Mer (Starfish) / Caroline Deruas, France Marc and Camille live with their young daughter in an abandoned house on the Estérel coast. Mornings, Marc fishes to feed his family and works afternoons as a parking lot attendant. They live quietly on the fringes of society until the day a gendarme decides to put an end to this freedom.

Trout / Johnny Barrington, UK Life for a young Scottish couple is altered after a bizarre chain of events.

X / Raphael Wahl, Germany Inspired by Stanislav Lem’s short stories about the spaceman Ijon Tichy, »X« tells a tale of a space travel adventure. An astronaut loses his identity when an inexplicable space machine produces countless copies of him and his spaceship. In his fight to eradicate these counterfeits, his own authenticity is questioned…

Deface / John Arlotto, USA When a North Korean man is pushed to the edge by his daughter’s senseless death, he risks his life to challenge the oppressive government, making his voice heard through an extreme and unusual action.

August 21st

Duck Man / Brian Hennigan, UK A simple guy becomes a celebrity after taking a job overseeing local waterfowl.

Quincy and Althea /Doug Lenox, USA While the rest of New Orleans rebuilds, a bickering married couple searches for a divorce amidst the wreckage spawned by Hurricane Katrina.

Los Zapatos de Muddy Mae / Miguel Campana, Spain ”The meek shall inherit the earth,” a proverb is played out in the Old West of America when a shoemaker confronts a sadistic outlaw with aching feet.

Rindin the Puffer / Len Simon, USA When our story begins, three young fish make fun of Rindin for being different. However when the same three fish get themselves into trouble, Rindin inadvertently saves their lives. With a newfound respect for Rindin, they all become best of friends.

Anolit / Stefan Faldbakken, Norway A circling roadmovie told from the back seat of a styled BMW.

August 28th

Professor Peebles / Pierce Davison, Australia Tired of being taunted as a goody two-shoes, Professor Pebbles ascends to the earth’s surface, determined to unleash some serious wrongdoing on those annoyingly innocent humans, now nobody will ever laugh at him again.

June Wedding / Barbara Hammond, USA On the way to his son’s wedding, a man stops in for a drink and talks about the past and the future with a lady who drinks champagne at noon.

Echo / Yann Gozlan, France Carole, a pregnant young woman, suffers from strange hearing problems. She hears sounds that make her dizzy. When her husband is held up on a film set, she finds herself alone in their new apartment. During the night, she hears stange and unexplained noises that intrigue and obsess her. Intense anxiety overcomes her.

Doggie / Simone van Dusseldorp, Netherlands This film is funny, but it has a serious background. A boy tries to recover his parents’ attention. Unfortunately this could be the everyday life in many families.

September 4th

Pickled Punk / Jackie Torrens, Canada Pickled Punk is the story of a little fetus with a big non-life as it travels through the lives of a group of small town artists.

Two Swimmers / Steven Sander, UK At 21 miles wide and very, very cold, the English Channel is regarded the world over as one of the ultimate swimming challenges.  Achieving such a goal can push both mind and body to their limits, and sometimes beyond. Two Swimmers is the inspirational true story of a young swimmer and his coach as they attempt to swim the Channel in the summer of 2005 and the dramatic events that follow.

Cough Drop / Kristina Lear, USA Ten-year-old Kate has confusing parents; her self-absorbed father is charming and attractive and her anxious mother is loving and controlling. One day after school, Kate is asked by a strange man to take a ride with him. Encouraged by the unknown man’s kind words and easy manner as well as the excitement of doing something secret from her parents, Kate decides to make her first break from mom and dad’s guidance and take a different route home.

Lonely Together / Trond Fausa Aurvag, Norway When his girlfriend leaves him Thomas indulges in self-pity. When love suddenly reappears into his life, he realizes what he’s really been missing.

September 11th

Equipajes / Toni Bestard, Spain Two passengers agree on a sexually charged bet while waiting for their luggage.

Resistance Aux Tremblements (Shock Resistance) / Olivier Hems, France A mysterious old lady dwells in an abandoned apartment block. She lives alone but will simply not leave the place.

Olis Chance / Saschka Unseld/Johannes Weiland – Germany This painless educational film was commissioned by Deutsche Bahn AG as a public service to raise school children’s consciousness about rail yard safety.

Baby, Let’s Play House / Sivan Gur-Arieh, USA Following a plot involving a strange elderly couple, a man whose wife has left him and a naive Elvis impersonator and his wife, set in the Southern California desert.

Apple / Jonas Rudstrom, Sweden A young boy spots the most beautiful apple in the tree across the hedge. A desire is born. One problem remains – the tree belongs to the most dangerous man in the neighborhood.

Thursday, September 18

A special screening of last years’ finalists.

• Robota / Marc Beurteaux, Canada
• I’ll See You In My Dreams / Miguel Angel Vivas, Portugal
• Massima Punizione / Filippo Macelloni, Italy
• The Fan and the Flower / Bill Plympton, USA
• When Elvis Came to Visit / Andreas Tibblin, Sweden
• Bonjour Danny Bonjour / Brett Shumway, USA
• Copy Shop / Virgil Widrich, Austria
• For Interieur / Patrick Poubel, France

Sunday, September 21: Series Finale