A World of Shorts: Family Ties
The monthly shorts programme has one last hurrah before going on hiatus.
Still from Nuru.
The Canadian Film Centre’s monthly series A World of Shorts has been one of the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema’s mainstays since the venue reopened its doors in March. Stalwarts will be sad to hear that this installment will be the last, as the CFC recently announced that it would be re-evaluating its public activities. The Worldwide Short Film Festival and its offshoots will be on hiatus until further notice.
That’s glum news, but you’d best buck up in time for the final World of Shorts programme, entitled “Family Ties.” This month’s selections put the focus on misfits who sit on the outsides of tight-knit groups, cultivating their eccentricities. As per the CFC’s usual mandate, the entries cast a wide international net, with filmmakers hailing from as far as Belgium and Sweden—although the majority are working in English.
Thematically and formally, the films are pretty diverse, with a healthy mix of animation, light comedy, and melodrama. Fittingly, given the subject matter, the pair we’re most interested in seem like outliers. Michael Palmaers’ Nuru, which blends live-action with animation, is about an experiment conducted on a captive gorilla. It’s supposedly inspired by René Magritte’s surrealist painting The Empire of Light, best known these days as the inspiration for The Exorcist’s iconic poster. We’re also curious about Mario Adamson’s I Am Round, a claymation piece about a round kid who doesn’t fit into the (literally) square world around her.
