Short but sweet
FILM FOCUS: As York’s Aesthetica Short Film Festival wins BAFTAaccreditation, Sarah Freeman speaks to founder Cherie Federico.
NE is about a sociopathic Spanish girl who decides to alleviate the boredom of life in small town Florida by becoming a comic book superhero. Another, set in a late 1990s publishing company, exposes the dark side of Cool Britannia. A third stars supermodel Lily Cole and hopes to raise awareness of global warming.
The programme of the annual Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York is nothing if not eclectic and this year there’s more riding on it than ever. Earlier this year, the event became the first film festival in a decade to win Bafta accreditation. It now joins the likes of the Leeds International Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and BFI London and for those who have their films selected it means they are eligible for a BAFTA award.
“This is our fourth year and we were overwhelmed with entries from across the world,” says Cherie Federico, who founded the festival after running a short film competition in the pages of the glossy arts magazine Aesthetica. “Short films are the way most directors begin their careers and what we really want to do is not only give them a platform to get their work seen, but also promote the genre to a much wider, mainstream audience.
“I think there is still a tendency for people to view short films as somehow inferior to full-length features. However, there is nothing amateur about any of the films included in this year’s programme. In fact, there is a real art form in being able to tell a fully-formed story, which is beautifully shot, in less than 15 minutes and that’s what each one of these films does.”
Divided into different strands, from comedy to drama, thriller and animation, the festival takes over the city for four days with screenings in galleries, museums, historic buildings and bars.
“What’s great about the festival is that it sets traditional filmmaking and storytelling against some more left-field offerings,”