SHORT FILM SESSION #1
A program of engaging, reallife narratives in short bitesized pieces, REALITY BITES presents the year’s very best documentary shorts. From cinema verité, to essay films, animations and ob-docs, this package presents a hardhitting dose of non-fiction shorts spanning the globe. At a time when truth is so often stranger than fiction, these films are not to be missed.
AGES 18+
DIEORAMA
Dir. Kevin Staake | 10 mins | USA | Documentary | AUS Premiere | 2019 Abigail Goldman spends her work days as an investigator for a public defender’s office in Washington state, helping people who are seriously in trouble—which can mean hours of staring at grisly pictures of crime scenes, visiting morgues, even observing autopsies. By night, she dreams up gruesome events, which she then turns into tiny, precise dioramas. Rife with scenes of imminent death and brutal dismemberment, the fruits of Goldman’s painstaking labor would be adorable … if they weren’t so disturbing. In this new documentary short, we follow along as Goldman brings her miniature worlds of murder and mayhem to life with tweezers, paint, and resin, and meet the people who just can’t get enough of her twisted visions—where the final touch is always, in the artist’s words, “two or three brushstrokes of red paint.”
CINEMA RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME
Dir. Rachel Wolther | 5 mins | USA | Documentary | AUS Premiere | 2020 Catch a movie with film buff Caroline Golum, as she shares her thoughts on the best places to see weird movies in New York City and the state of cinema itself. We accompany Caroline to three movie screenings over the course of a week: a new indie at Anthology Film Archives, a matinee double-feature of 1920’s comedies at MOMA, and a late night 1970’s Italian horror film at The Quad. These scenes are intercut with an interview with Caroline at her apartment in Brooklyn, which is covered in vintage movie paraphernalia.
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JUST THAT TIME OF THE MONTH
Dir. Tess McArthur-Dowty | 7 mins | Australia | Documentary | AUS Premiere | 2019 In this visceral impressionistic film the viewer is invited into the director’s world as she experiences a menstrual cycle - from food cravings, to anxiety, to physical pain. Set almost entirely in the director’s bedroom, Just that time of the month uses a series of visceral visual metaphors to share the experience of having a period.
