Short Film Blogathon

Check out the blogathon, co-hosted by Culture Snob and Only the Cinema, here.

I am looking forward to seeing what short films the blog participants look at this week. I haven't done any critical evaluation in my posts, but here are short films I've blogged in the past, and I will add new ones to this list as I watch them:

My first project is to post a sample of short films from the early history of film. I've been watching some of them as I've run across them and sought out others specifically with this in mind. These early film makers had genius! A few shorts from early film history:
before 1894
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898

Alice comedies

George Landow

Ernie Gehr

Felix the Cat

Fernand Leger

Max Linder

Winsor McCay

Jean Rouch

Rene Clair

Robert Breer

Chris Marker

Mary Ellen Bute

Marcel Duchamp's 1926 short film Anemic Cinema

Rose Hobart (1936)

The short films of Michael Dudok de Wit

The short films of Harry Smith

Shorts directed by J. Searle Dawley:
Rescued From an Eagle's Nest (1908)
Frankenstein (1910)
Snow White (1916)

The short films of Maya Deren

The films of Georges Melies:
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
The Man with the Rubber Head (1902)
The Infernal Cakewalk (1903)
The Monster (1903)
The Infernal Cauldron (1905)
The Black Imp (1905)

Cartoons for Halloween

Short films based on short stories:
The Sealed Room (1909), inspired by Poe's The Cask of Amontillado
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), based on the Poe story
The Tell-Tale Heart (1953) based on Poe
There Will Come Soft Rains is a Russian animated short film based on a Ray Bradbury short story.
Betty Boop as Cinderella and Snow White
Icarus, a retelling of the myth with robots
Lot in Sodom (1933) re-tells the Bible story.

Short films watched for the Luis Bunuel Blogathon

Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country -at 40 minutes- is perhaps pushing it for length to be a "short" film, but I tend to think of that as being the defining line. So, in my ignorance, I think of anything shorter than 40 minutes as being "short". Perhaps I'll learn more about the parameters during this blogathon.

So, Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct... It's 41 minutes long. Much too short to be considered a feature film, it qualifies as a "short" in my mind. How do you define "short"?

La Souriante Madame Beudet (1922), a Germaine Dulac short and one of the first (is it the first?) feminist films.

Links to lots of videos I watched for the Slapstick Blogathon, many of which were film shorts:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4, part 1
Day 4, part 2

Piotr Kamler's short films

I'm not including music videos as short films, but I couldn't ignore the Jefferson Airplane/Star Trek White Rabbit.

I'm also not counting educational/informational films, but, again, I couldn't leave out A Fair(y) Use Tale. And there are a couple of great videos speaking to the copyright issues involved in DRM here and here. And then there is video of historic events, such as I included in my post on the Galveston hurricane.

Animator vs. Animation 1 and 2

Top SF videos online

Beware the Chub Chubs. I do love this one.

Remember Matt? Well, I don't know where the hell he is now, but you can see where the hell he was in these travel narrative dance videos.

Beneath the Willow Tree, a Chinese Tale

Since it's winter Fisherman's Nightmare and that old Bud Ice Penguin TV ad lend some seasonal atmosphere to the project.

Elephants Dream made a big splash when it first came out, but if there've been ripples since I've not noticed.