Opening Night at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival | displays

Spotlight Program started with ] Microwave Time Machine in which a young scientist discovers how to transport objects in time in a microwave oven. How would you feel if it was 1985 and you were about to boil water for your Sanka and you will find almond milk in your microwave. Then a fidget spinner. Then an iPhone. Something like that would probably ruin my breakfast.

The following was Mabingwa which translates from Swahili to English as a champion. The film focuses on four young Kenyans – including two from a Nairobi slum – who have the opportunity to do a Safari. The 37-minute film also focuses on Kenya's daunting environmental problems, resulting from the explosive growth of Kenya's population, which is expected to double in 25 years, and its fragile environment. While keeping a hopeful tone reminiscent of the Lion King, it gives an excellent overview of Kenya's unique environmental diversity, an honest badessment of its environmental challenges, and a brief overview of the daily challenges that slum dwellers face. face the day to day. based.

Momentum is a much shorter film (six minutes) that also aims to keep young people engaged in society, filmed much closer to home, right here in Indianapolis . The subject is the soap box race, where young city dwellers have the chance to apply skills to the race that will eventually help them in their careers, regardless of the career they choose. If you grew up in Indy at any time between the 1980s and 2000s and read The Indianapolis Star, you will read articles from Y-Press and its forerunner The Children & # 39; s Express in its pages. Teams of young journalists aged 10 to 18 covered issues ranging from gang violence to immigration policies and their work often struck journalists Indy Star . It is clear in interviews with former journalists that the lessons learned in the program helped them in their subsequent career. Unfortunately, the program, hampered by a lack of funding as a result of the Great Recession, closed down permanently in 2012. The good news is that the program's archives are now digitized and will be available for future generations of students. teachers.

The former director of Y Press, Lynn Sygiel, was present at the screening screening, and I asked her what the program's impact was.

"It took children curiously, children who had skills of children who did not have skills and let them run with their curiosity, but that taught them to form questions, to formulate a idea of ​​history and tell this story, "she said. in black and white, it's a powerful one. Focusing on a boy's relationship with his mother – who is not there when she dies in her hospital bed – it's a beautifully told tale and beautifully animated. And the score, a stellar piano track by Indianapolis jazz musician Mina Keohane, fits beautifully with the emotionally charged tale.

Speaking of emotion, the Grateful documentary about Jenni Berebitsky, an Indianapolis woman diagnosed with ALS five years ago, shows the devastating toll the disease has had on her body. But it also shows how she managed to keep a sense of humor during all that time as well as a sense of dignity. The most powerful moment of the movie is perhaps the one where you see talking about a conversation that she had with her son about how the illness got worse and how she might not be even longer. While being severely limited in the ability to speak, she manages to make the audience laugh and cry at the same time. The emotion of the screening of the film was accentuated at the opening night of the festival by the presence of Berebitsky and his family, and the presence of Berebtisky in the question-and-answer session.

For the record, there were seven films in the program, but I missed the seven-minute long Chain-Stitched: The Work of Jerry Lee Atwood, about one of the leading designers and manufacturers of western wear. Let's just say that's what happens during a short film festival when you have to use the bathroom.

Anyway, if you think you would like all these movies to see them all together, you still have a chance. On Sunday, July 29, the Indiana Spotlight 2 program will be shown at the IMA in Newfields at 7:45 pm. But look at the other programs here, and the others, lots of other shorts available and see what attracts you.