Paste Rock ’n’ Reel Short-Film Contest Winners

No instant replay, no do-overs—here are the confirmed, official selections of Paste’s inaugural short-film competition at Paste’s October Rock ’n’ Reel Festival. Thanks to our DVD, you can host a mini-fest from your couch as we showcase these shorts over the next year. Audience and critical feedback for the entire program was overwhelmingly positive. Here, we highlight a few festival winners included on this issue’s DVD.

Best Drama winner Wow and Flutter is the story of a young teen’s first crush and the music that becomes the voice of his infatuation. Director Gary Lundgren says the film was inspired by his own teenage years. “I just wanted it to be emotionally honest: what infatuation feels like and what music means at that awkward age of 14, when the whole world seems to be stacked against you.” Lundgren is currently writing a feature-length film he plans to shoot in early 2006. Like Wow and Flutter, which features the music of Damien Jurado, The Go-Betweens and Manta Ray, it will have a great soundtrack.

A Plan, which won Best Children and Family film, is the animated tale of a boy’s daydream of saving his family. Playing on a child’s elaborate fantasy, the story is peppered with beautiful images, both real and imagined: a hand dipped in water; a snarling dragon that becomes a swaying willow. A Plan is the fifth film from director/animator Tom Schroeder, and the child in it is based on young Schroeder and his dreams of being “the hero of the day.”

In hindsight, Schroeder says, he sees that his films generally deal with a journey or adventure where there’s an “anticipated moment of climax—when the characters expectations are confounded, and then the real test of the character is ‘What do you do after that?’” The balance of internal fantasy and physical reality is central to his work.

Facechasers, winner of Best Experimental film, was originally conceived as a music video for Norwegian jazz/electronic group Wibutee, but became more than just a visual interpretation of the music. A tense, fast- paced work with stark, simple, black-and-white images set against the desolation of an empty beach, the film’s post-apocalyptic mood, says director Gabriel Judet-Weinshel, was influenced by the general chaos and insanity of the 21st century. “A lot of the things I’ve been writing about are in some ways a reflection of reading the news every day and feeling often an impending sense of doom.” The film, he says, creates “some kind of dark world where there’s this literally faceless, evil force that’s trying to wipe out anyone’s autonomy and individuality.”

Approaching a personal issue from a different perspective was the inspiration for Andrew Stanfield’s Giving Her Away (winner, Best Student Film), the story of a woman’s search for the daughter she gave up for adoption 20 years earlier. Stanfield’s wife was adopted from Korea, and his thankfulness for that event led him to consider the woman who made the decision to give up her child to another family.

“I wondered about the fate or providence or whatever you want to call it of how that all worked out, and I started to think of the other side of that, you know? What goes into that choice, and I’m sure [some] of the hardest questions would be, ‘Did I do the right thing?’ ‘What happened?’ [and] ‘Did they have a better life than I could have given them?’” A sense of optimism and making peace with decisions is central to the movie.

PASTE ROCK ’N’ REEL SHORT FILM WINNERS

Best Children & Family
A Plan (Pictured above)
Director: Tom Schroeder

Best Documentary
Found in America
Director: Scott Patterson

Best Experimental
Facechasers
Director: Gabriel Judet Weinshel

Best Animation
Little Red Plan
Director: Joey Jones & Wira Winata

Best Comedy
Perils of Nude Modeling
Director: Scott Rice

Best Drama
Wow and Flutter
Director: Gary Lundgren

Best Comedic Drama
Flightless Birds
Director: Phil Johnston

Best Student
Giving Her Away
Director: Andrew Stanfield

Best Local Film
Theodore
Director: Micah Stansell

Best In Fest
The Passage of Mrs. Calabash
Director: Scott Tuft