After viewing an eye-glazing 198 short films, Alison Vermee still says programming shorts is one of the most rewarding aspects of her job as Canadian Images programmer at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

‘Shorts can be very eye-opening,’ she says. ‘They can tell you more about the culture of a country in a more accessible form than a feature.’

Vermee and a group of six volunteer programmers selected 28 shorts out of the multitude to comprise the festival’s Canadian shorts lineup.

Vermee says while viff screens some Canadian features that don’t run in the Toronto or Montreal festivals, the most dramatic difference is in the shorts programs. ‘People’s tastes are more eclectic and there is more to choose from,’ she says. ‘Our program is usually wildly different.’

This year, Vermee reports the bar has been raised in terms of technical quality amongst the short entries. ‘There are many more films on 35mm; there’s a high degree of sophistication and an elevated cinematic level,’ she says.

The five programs of shorts showcase western talent and explore issues of racial identity and place.

The Land Rights Programme, which deals with Native rebellion against federal land policies, includes Alanis Obomsawin’s My Name Is Kahentiiosta and Patricia Tassinari’s Broken Promises.

Two documentaries, including Chore Wars, Kathy Garneau’s look at the battle of the sexes as waged on the domestic front, comprise The Best of B.C. Broadcast Docs.

Guy Maddin’s Odilon Redon, an examination of a charcoal sketch by the titular artist, which in turn is an impression of an Edgar Allan Poe short story, appears in the Prairie Programme, as does Thomas, Keith Behrman’s story of a young boy dealing with loss and loneliness after the death of his brother.

Short films are widely recognized as allowing a broader creative framework in subject and approach. ‘(Filmmakers) can take more chances and perhaps deal with a subject matter that is not appropriate to a feature film,’ Vermee says, pointing to Unbound in the B.C. Originals Programme, which deals with breasts and how women feel about them.

The flip side of this creative free-for-all is that shorts are often viewed as the poor cousin to the feature, having a limited commercial shelf life and distribution avenues that are notoriously narrow and elusive.

While short films are often undervalued, they are still considered a ‘calling card,’ an introduction of the filmmaker’s work to the film community and to the public.

Jan Miller, executive director at the National Screen Institute, is quick to acknowledge the importance of a short to a filmmaker and to the film community. ‘If we want an industry in Canada we have to provide a training ground, and the only way to do that is through short films,’ she says. ‘It becomes the fallow field for talent to grow.’

Garneau, whose 47-minute Chore Wars was made for and partially financed by CBC Newsworld, says her short films were essential in obtaining funding for her first feature, Tokyo Cowboy, which has been screened at numerous international festivals.

Filmmaker Mark Wihak, who made his film (Stories from) The Land of Cain as a solo project, says the short is at once an important creative process and a highly ignored one.

‘There are numerous examples of filmmakers who establish their identity with short films,’ he says, citing Mina Shum (Me, Mom and Mona) and Clement Virgo (Save My Lost Nigga Soul) as exemplars. ‘But people think, `I’ll never get taken seriously unless I make a feature.’ ‘

According to Wihak, while filmmakers tend to accept the short form as legitimate, the media tend to accord filmmaker status only to those who have produced a feature.

Odilon Redon, produced by the u.k.’s Koninck, was undertaken by Maddin ‘for the fun of making a movie and to scrape the rust off my eyeballs. If you’ve made a short, unless you win best short film at a festival, you don’t get mentioned,’ says Maddin. He adds that shorts are often in a ‘short film ghetto,’ and in a festival setting are shown in programs that can seem disjointed and interminably long. ‘I can see why short filmmakers get depressed,’ he says.

While funding sources for filmmakers disappear, it might follow that the short film’s importance ascends as independent features become impossible to finance, but most short filmmakers will attest to the economic difficulty of making a film of any length, particularly a ‘longer’ short.

Miller points to the half-hour films that were being made 10 to 15 years ago that provided training and inspiration for nascent talent. Maddin also emphasizes the crucial role of the disappearing half-hour format, explaining that he was first inspired by and attracted to independent film through the half-hour shorts that came out of the Winnipeg Film Group.

‘The cost of making a half-hour film used to be about $5,000, now it’s about $35,000,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how easy it would be to do that anymore.’

Miller says the nsi and the Canadian Film Centre are working on a project called TV Production Lab, which would cater to the half-hour film.

Widely recognized in the shorts universe is the primacy of delivery systems in bringing the genre some degree of recognition.

Despite the difficulty seemingly inherent in the process, the lot of short filmmakers, by many reports, is improving somewhat.

Miller, who founded Edmonton’s Local Heroes International Screen Festival, known for its womb-like encouragement of short films and filmmakers, says headway is slowly being made in the screening of shorts. For years, says Miller, the only distribution avenue for short films was the festival.

‘The reality is changing in terms of access to broadcast waves, particularly specialty channels,’ she says. ‘More and more broadcasters and programmers are coming to discover new talent and finding spots on the channel where they can show it.’

Miller cites short film-friendly broadcast venues such as cbc’s Canadian Reflections and Open Wide, Alberta’s ACCESS Network and Global’s New Producers Series.

‘A lot of provincial stations,’ she says, ‘are recognizing the appeal and the potential for a program of short material.’

Miller also points out that a number of provincial agencies like the Manitoba Cultural Industries Development Office, Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and British Columbia Film are fostering shorts with financial encouragement.

Lynn Smith (Sandburg’s Arithmetic) says she has had relatively good fortune with the distribution of her film Pearl’s Diner (Best Animated Short at the 1993 viff), which has been distributed internationally and has appeared on wtn and Open Wide. The film’s international distribution was facilitated by Montreal’s Films Transit and by exposure and contacts garnered from screenings at international film festivals. Smith was also among four women featured in Animated Women, a documentary series produced for the Independent Television Service and shown on pbs in the u.s. and on the bbc in the u.k.

Maddin notes that Telefilm Canada is now providing incentives for distributors to actually distribute shorts rather than just having them in their collections. He also says the Winnipeg Film Group markets its short films and packages them for distribution, including one package done through a co-op in Rotterdam that will be touring Europe.

Tales From the Winnipeg Film Group is another initiative, which, through American distributor Zeitgeist, markets film packages in the u.s. ‘It’s up to each individual film co-op in each city to try and package these things and distribute them,’ he says.

Thomas, Behrman’s first film, has been picked up by Chicago’s Picture Start for distribution in the u.s. Behrman says the Canada Council has offered him financing for his next short based on favorable reaction to Thomas.

A panacea for what ails short films is prescribed by Garneau: ‘If I were the dictator of Canada, I would make it law that short films would play before features everywhere.’