We asked our Audience Awards filmmaker community to submit their short films about love. Here are the top three jury-selected winning films from our 2018 Love Shorts Film Festival.
First place film, Fill Your Heart With French Fries, directed by Tamar Glezerman, is a short sad comedy about a woman who gets dumped by her girlfriend at a fast food joint, and, too sad to go home, just stays there for a week. Glezerman shared with us some of the challenges and triumphs behind the making of her film.
Making Fill Your Heart With French Fries was a challenge in the way underfunded indie films always are, but I had the support of the filmmaking community of “The Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective”, as well as my creative partner Chris Casey. Working with friends is the best, and a very good antidote to not having a big budget. The biggest triumph with this film is the online reception, the fact that over half a million people have viewed it on youtube alone, and the audience just keeps growing. Which is exactly why I love taking part in online festivals such as the audience awards – connecting with viewers and getting to new ones is basically the reason we do this. -Tamar Glezerman
Fill Your Heart With French Fries has been selected as Vimeo staff pick, Short of the Week best of the year, and has clocked over 600K online views.
In the second place film, A Subway Story by Eugene Kolb, two people recount their first meeting on the New York City subway. Eugene gave us some insight into the making of the film and explained,
Making A Subway Story was challenging just because of how personal the film was. I poured so much of myself into the film that I was apprehensive about the whole thing – most certainly whether others would relate to the story and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. That’s the flip side of making something very personal – you’re invested and you care deeply about it, which helps carry it from start to finish. -Eugene Kolb
A Subway Story has been selected as Vimeo staff pick, featured on Short of the Week and has screened at festivals all over the world including the Tribeca Film Festival.
The third place film, Marina & Adriene by Lucy Campbell features runaway lovers who dress as men to get work as on a fishing trawler, hoping to sail away to a new life. Far out at sea, a ferocious storm picks up, and childbirth, death, and superstition are challenged by the power of love. Campbell explained to us her inspiration behind making the film.
My inspiration and drive for telling this story comes from growing up realising that I would have had more physical and social freedom, been able to be more physically and geographically adventurous if I had been a boy, and I longed to be able to pass myself off as a boy, so I could explore the world without the sense of vulnerability of being a young female alone. The film was madly ambitious on the budget, for any film, but for a short film by an early career filmmaker, to film on a boat at sea in a storm. I see many flaws in it, but with a bit of time and distance from it, I do love the rawness of spirit it captures. It does finally feel like a triumph of will over experience. –Lucy Campbell
Marina & Adriene has toured with the British Council’s Shakespeare on Screen Programme 2016 to 150 different international screenings and can be seen featured in articles on Short of the Week and Director’s Notes to name a few.
