The penultimate grouping of short films in this year's online Bolton Film Festival was 'Best Of The Net', and here I watched two of these shorts.
1. Slapper - Australia - Dir: Luci Schroder
Whatever good the Australian Tourist Board has done to encourage and promote their country, this film does just the opposite.
This film tells the story of a teenager, Taylor (Sapphire Blossom), knicknamed 'Slapper' by her school peers, who is a thrill-seeking, down-on-her-luck, underprivileged unfortunate who has ended up on the wrong side of the tracks with the druggies, criminals, and general low-life in a small rural township.
After having unprotected sex with one of her posse, she needs to buy and take the pill before it is too late, and also has to babysit a neighbour's 5 year old renegade, Vegas (Maddy Brady), at the same time.
The film doesn't pull any punches nor shy away from any aspect of this girl's life, as the film contains swearing, drug use, nudity, sex, violence etc , and it is gritty and realistic. That is until she has a car crash. The impact of the crash making her body tumble to the ground would easily have been enough to kill her; however, miraculously she gets up with nothing more than a few cuts and even carries the young girl she is babysitting on her back straight afterwards. I might be wrong, but that was simply not possible.
However, the end of the film comes at the chemist shop when she finally manages to get hold of the pill, drops it, and her young charge picks it up and places it in her mouth instead! A desperate but actually comedic ending, which seemed a little out of kilter with the realism and despair previously.
2. Any Instant Whatever - UK - Dir: Michelle Brand
"I am sitting ina room... the same room you are sitting in now" proclaims the titling at the start of this animated short, as a man sits at a desk on the only chair in an otherwise empty room.
This bizarre and hugely abstract animation then seems to take him and us on an LSD / Acid trip adventure as first shadows and then walls and furniture move quickly and disjointedly; then the room itself starts spinning and changing shape, texture and eventually colour too as we move deeper and deeper into this man's psychedlic quasi-reality.
It's imaginative, quite odd, but with seemingly no point to the animation.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 24/10/20
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