Thirty-eight Canuck short films will screen as part of TIFF 2003’s Perspective Canada Shorts program. The films, culled from 500 submissions considered by programmers Stacey Donen and Liz Czach, are as diverse in length, style and subject matter as they are in the reasons for their creation. While some directors now consider shorts merely as a means of making the jump to long form, many at TIFF still see shorts as an end unto themselves.

The films are arranged in five programs not tied to a single theme, save for the desire to encompass as wide a range of styles and regions as possible.

‘[Canadians] have so many different ways of looking at things – to have it all compacted into 90-odd minutes is a nice tour of the country,’ notes Donen.

In terms of technique, Donen has noticed a decline in 16mm usage in favor of digital video, either for entire projects or some part of the creative process. The increased use of digital is a function of budgets, although Donen doesn’t feel the funding situation has really changed that much for shorts makers in Canada. Where the funding cuts may be showing is in the increased number of filmmakers turning their skills to ‘calling cards.’

‘This whole idea of making a short film to show people how talented a filmmaker is so that they can go off and make features – I don’t really care for [it],’ Donen says. ‘I think it takes a great [particular] talent to make a short film, and I don’t think there’s really a progression [over the formats].’

This is not to say there is no crossover. This year’s highlights include a six-minute film from director Peter Lynch (Cyberman), titled Animal Nightmares, and other shorts from filmmakers who have won acclaim for their long-form work.

Sometimes short subjects do serve as a launching pad into the long-form realm, as in the case of Moccasin Flats, a 23-minute DV movie produced by Toronto’s Big Soul Productions and directed by American Randy Redroad. Prior to its screening at TIFF 2003, Flats has already spun off into a TV series. The film, which examines the conflicts felt by a young man leaving his native ghetto for college, is being turned into a 6 x 30 series for Showcase, APTN and SCN Saskatchewan. Canuck Stacey Curtis will helm the series instead of Redroad due to Cancon restrictions.

After working on his award-winning feature The Doe Boy, Redroad says making the short was a relief, and the series that resulted was far better than he expected. ‘I don’t know what else you could ask of a short that you make in five days,’ he notes. ‘It was chaos, but it was beautiful chaos.’

Winnipeg filmmaker deco dawson, who has already won acclaim for five shorts, has plans to begin work soon on a feature. The filmmaker has the distinction of having two shorts screen at TIFF this year – The Fever of the Western Nile and Defile in Veil.

‘He makes films unlike anyone else. We just felt that we needed to show both of them,’ says Donen.

That dawson is heavily influenced by both classical film style and unorthodox technique is evident in Fever and Defile. Both are black and white and have neither dialog nor narration. Fever, which is destined for a European art installation, was shot one day per month over three months. Meanwhile, Defile began shooting in 1998 as dawson’s third film (although it was finished as his seventh), shooting one day a year for the last five years.

The director, a former student of Guy Maddin’s who has also worked on some of Maddin’s films, didn’t seek funding for either project, supporting them instead with the $7,500 that came from his 2001 TIFF award for best Canadian short film for FILM(dzama), and his own money.

‘I would rather make the movie than spend the energy waiting to see if I got the money to make [it],’ dawson says. ‘I had no timeline, I didn’t have anyone to answer to, and I didn’t have any cost reports.’ Both films were shot on reversal film stock and edited on Apple Final Cut Pro.

With dozens of films and numerous awards to his credit, veteran Toronto director Mike Hoolboom is certainly not known for reining in his creativity. Hoolboom comes to TIFF this year with the aptly titled In the Dark. Running eight minutes, the film opens with 300 seconds of narration over a black screen. In the Dark was funded out-of-pocket and shot on 16mm in one afternoon with a high-speed camera for a true slow-motion end sequence.

Hoolboom has great expectations for the future of the form, fueled by continuing technological advances.

‘I’m looking forward to the time when little kids are going to grow up with pocket-sized video cameras,’ he says, ‘and they’ll be editing by the time they’re eight or nine. By the time they’re 20, they will be savvy veterans of the medium… I think we’ll see astonishing things.’

Hoolboom’s prediction might not be too far off. Two shorts in this year’s program come from film schools: Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come to Dinner, from University of British Columbia’s Jamie Travis, and The School, from Ezra Krybus and Matthew Miller of York University.

For the first time in years, five shorts will be shown before features – an effort, says Donen, at audience cross-pollination. Although the shorts program has always played to full houses, Donen believes the more who experience the community of the program, with more filmmakers on hand and much more interaction, the more who will get hooked.

Some of the shorts will also have a TIFF life after the festival, with about 20 selected for the Canadian Short Film Showcase, carrying them through about 130 theatres across the country.