And the winner is…
Announced on Monday, the Gold Medal winning film in the 18th Annual Manhattan Short Film Festival was “Bis Gleich.” The 15-minute German film, which translates to “Until Then,” was a powerful film about an elderly woman who went out of her way to ensure an ailing neighbor maintained his perspective on life.
The film’s leading actor, Horst Westphal, also won the festival’s Best Actor award.
Helping to determine Best Film and Best Actor awards was a near sold-out crowd at the Sunflower Theatre in downtown Cortez on Saturday. Those in attendance joined thousands of other international film lovers from cinemas in New York, Moscow, Cape Town, London, Mumbai and Buenos Aires to view and vote on the 10 finalists selected for the annual Manhattan Short Film Festival.
Upon entering their respective cinemas, viewers were provided an official voting card to select their favorite film and actor. Ballots were subsequently sent to Manhattan Short’s New York City headquarters were they were tabulated.
“Cortez needs more events like this,” said local resident Michael Billy, who attended the nearly three-hour screening.
The Sunflower Theatre audience on Saturday agreed. Joanie Fraughton, executive director of the annual Durango Film Festival, said she wanted to bring the Manhattan Film Festival to Cortez in order to judge the community’s response with regard to holding future film events.
“Would you come out and support an event if we brought over the best of films screened at the Durango Film Festival?” Fraughton posed as the audience responded with cheers and a raucous round of applause.
Based on the crowd’s applause and cheers, the Cortez favorite Manhattan Short at Saturday’s screening was “Grounded,” a 19-minute French film. The short film revealed the impossible tale of a ticket agent who went beyond her duties to ensure a woman made an airline flight to attend her mother’s funeral.
Another audience favorite was “Dad’s in Mum.” The laugh-out-loud, 6-minute French short provided audience members with an innocent look at “hanky-panky” from a child’s perspective.
Earning the festival’s Silver Award for best film was “Shok.” Based on a true story, the 20-minute tragedy centered around betrayal and redemption from the perspective of two boys in war-torn Kosovo in the 1990s.
The festival’s third place award for best film was “Bear Story,” a heart-warming, animated 10-minute tale from Chile about a bear that was enslaved to work at a circus.
Other finalists screened at the festival included “Listen,” a disturbing 13-minute short about an Arab woman who found herself victim to domestic violence in Denmark.
“Forever Over” was an outrageous 14-minute short from Germany about a woman scorned after she attempted to spice up her love life.
“Sundown,” a 15-minute short from Turkey, revealed the shock and grief experienced by a woman after finding her mother dead.
Another animated short, “Patch,” was a bizarre; yet Cortez crowd-pleasing 3-minute film from Switzerland that utilized time-lapse photography to portray a man running to catch a train.
“El Camino Solo,” which translates to “The Lonely Road,” was a 12-minute American film about a stranded motorist who discovers the kindness in strangers.
This year’s Manhattan Short Film Festival, a celebration of the short film genre, received a record-breaking 678 entries from 52 countries.
The annual festival started with a projector and the side of a truck parked on Mulberry Street in New York City in 1998.
tbaker@the-journal.com
