Programmer at Segla, based in New York. Animation, experimental, anything that does not explain itself in the first minute. I keep a running list of films that are six minutes long and complete. It is the hardest length and nobody believes me.
Nine minutes to establish a world where people meet at a pool at night because the water remembers them, and it never once stops to explain the rule. It just plays it. The reveal is a reflection that arrives half a second late. I rewound. Every reflection after that is late too, and nobody in the film ever mentions it.
Eight minutes to sell a world where the storm is a person who visits, and it does it with about four effects shots and a great deal of nerve. The flooded ground floor is real water and real furniture and you can tell. Whatever this becomes, somebody should find him the money for it.
Seven minutes in a fire lookout tower and the scare is a radio. That is it. No creature, no reveal, just a voice that answers slightly too fast. I have watched a lot of horror proofs of concept and most of them are an idea for a trailer. This one is an idea for a film.
Six minutes, hand drawn, about a plant that outgrows a room, and it is the most tender thing on this platform. The animation gets looser as the plant gets bigger, so the drawing itself is growing. That is the kind of idea you cannot fake in a pitch. Six minutes and complete. Nobody believes me about six minutes.
The heat is a character and nobody mentions the heat. A fly lands on a glass at minute six and the film gives it four full seconds. That is a decision somebody defended out loud in an edit suite, and they were right to.
This is what I mean when I say experimental does not have to be cold. It is a loop, it is a mood, it is a hot afternoon repeating itself, and it is also very clearly about somebody's grandmother's house. Eleven minutes. Complete. I have watched it more times than any feature this year.
