Winning Memories of Us: A short film, an work of poem

Last week was one of the memorable times in my life. I did volunteering work for The Busan Asian Short Film Festival as an interpreter 4 days. While working, I was lucky enough to watch many short films, around 36 ones, with audience and some directors.

I hadn’t had a chance to watch any short film before, so the last week was so priceless. Not only that, but it was great to work as an interpreter again. From the movies I enjoyed, I established my own ideas about the short film.

A short film is an art work running from 5 min to 30 min, which mirrors the unique point of view of the film’s director. I remembered some interesting films among 36 movies I watched, which are The Structure of Goliath (documentary), CATCH-22 (fiction), 731: Two versions of Hell (documentary), Syran Syran(fiction), Other People (animation), Jai-hee’s Eiffel Tower (fiction), She was my brother’s ex-girlfriend, Anti-sex (fiction), Fruit of Olive Tree (fiction), The Bicycle Thief (fiction), You will know (fiction), Twins (fiction), Three important components for Rock’n Roll (documentary) and A wake (fiction).

First of all, a short film should express and deliver the director’s perspective, idea, or experience to audience, every scene has very abundant implication. The scene is made up for background, colour, costumes, acting, characters, manner of talking, lines, and they are all linked to each other so closely. Every single element plays a major roll in the scene. That makes me find the movie more interesting and meaningful after learning it from the director.

Secondly, if a long film is regarded as a long novel, I think the short film can be a short story or a poem at times. Especially a poetic short film, which has plentiful metaphors, symbols, could give a totally different subject to the audience beyond the director’s anticipation. Sometimes it also makes me come up with a different ending which the director didn’t intend. That’s because the director set many devices in the movies on purpose to let audience think freely and imagine all their own endings such as Jai-hee’s Eiffel Tower.

Thirdly, don’t jump to the conclusion that all short films are boring, serious and hard to follow. The movies such as ‘She was my brother’s ex-girlfriend’, ‘Twins’ and ‘The Bicycle Thief’ were much more funny, unique and hilarious than ordinary comedies, and even has brilliant turning over , for example ‘The Bicycle Thief. ’

Finally, long films have long-running time like 90 minutes. I saw the movie ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, and it was about 160 minutes. When I talked about the movie with my friends afterward, however, I didn’t have a lot to talk about more than the 5 mints at the longest. Even I enjoyed the movie a lot. On the other hand, although all exclusive short films I liked have only 10-to 30 minutes showing time, I might need a half minute to talk about the movie like which scene was the most impressive, how I think about the ending, ambience, background, metaphors, symbols and etc. Especially about ‘Syran Syran’, ‘Other People’, and ‘Jai-hee’s Eiffel Tower.’

I still love to go to the cinema and watch long romantic movies or comedy whatever. I just compare the features of two different genres.