Still from Die Farbe
Last weekend was the H.P. Lovecraft film festival in Portland Oregon, and although I didn’t manage to get it together and attend the first night, I was able to sneak in without scaring anybody on the second evening.
Here’s a list of the short films that were playing at this event:
Night One
Call of Nature by Rick Tillman
Flush with Fear by Christopher G Moore (site)
Doppelganger by Theo Stefanski (site)
The Ritual by Will Wright (director’s showreel)
Idol Worship by Theo Stefanski (site)
Dirty Silverware by Steve Daniels (trailer, stuff)
Ethereal Chrysalis by Syl Disjonk (site)
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ by Christopher Saphire (site, trailer)
Apartment Eleven by Mark Player (trailer)
Night Two
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ by Christopher Saphire (site, trailer)
Window Into Time by Thomas Nicol (animated short by same director)
Haselwurm by Eugenio Villani (watch!)
Black Goat by Erik Wilson (watch!, official site)
The Island by Nathan Fisher (watch!)
Static Aeons by Gib Patterson (watch!)
Shadow of the Unnamable by Sascha Renninger (official site)
Also playing were two feature films. These were The Whisperer in Darkness an HPLHS effort directed by Sean Branney (trailer) and Die Farbe (“The Color” in English) (trailer) directed by Huan Vu.
It actually turned out that the sound was off when they tried to play The Raven on the first night, so they played it the second night. The shorts were judged by Guillermo Del Toro, who declared a tie for the winner of the festival. The winners were:
- First Place: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ by Christopher Saphire
- First Place: Static Aeons by Gib Patterson
- Runner Up: Black Goat by Erik Wilson
So the good news is that I got to see all of the shorts that Guillermo Del Toro liked the best.
In The Raven, a man is haunted by the memory of Lenore and his dread and sorrow are personified by (duh) a raven. I really liked this interpretation. Saphire did a great job on everything, especially the mood of the piece.
Window in Time follows a scientist and his shyly amorous lab assistant as they investigate an ancient chemical formula and unlock a horrible evil. This poetic and atmospheric short was my favorite. It had humor, horrible fates awaiting scientists who are investigating things they shouldn’t, and lots of juicy unheeded warnings.
A private hunt for a giant worm, (the Haselwurm) whose meat confers supernatural powers, goes horribly horribly wrong when one of the hunters is bitten and something happens that you’d rather not think about too much.
Man vs Wild meets Lovecraft in Black Goat, not a short but a trailer for a planned feature-length film. A monster hunter with a plan for avoiding certain death at the hands of a Lovecraftian monster. Short. Funny. Poetic. Six minutes!
I’m worried that I’m using the words “poetic” and “atmospheric” too much here. This is the last time, I promise! Despite being difficult to understand most of the time, atmospheric and poetic computer animated short Static Aeons successfully delivers its payload: The End of the World.
What drives the psyche of a man who would lock himself up in a well-stocked backyard bomb shelter, and who would listen to the world end outside as he tries not to go crazy on his tiny Island? Loneliness. Barbarism.
I will give a grudging “I see what you did there” to Shadow of the Unnamable for using a dialogue between two characters to Be The Story. But it didn’t work for me.
The feature that night was a German film, Die Farbe. Based on Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. The movie is faithful to the basic story, but sets the main events in World War II Germany, and I can’t help but see it now politicized. Horrible things happened to some people: Many people forget (or at least pretend). Some can’t believe something like that would ever happen. Others struggle to forget and fail. A few are driven mad. The movie itself is creepy and… and… atmospheric (sorry) but I found the long slow burn trajectory of the bulk of this film a little tedious. It has one really delicious scene where someone nudges a corpse with a broom. Best use of dust in a movie, ever.
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