Short Film Showcase - Cashback (2004)

Cashback, 2004.

Written and Directed by Sean Ellis.
Starring Sean Biggerstaff, Emilia Fox, Stuary Goodwin, Michael Dixon and Michael Lambourne.

Cashback centres on an aspiring art student, Ben (Sean Biggerstaff), who spends his nights working the graveyard shift at his local 24 hour supermarket. While his co-workers all have their own methods of wasting time as the clock ticks down on their shift, Ben has his own unique technique for fending off boredom by imagining that time stands still, giving him the freedom to explore his creative side.

Although Cashback received some criticism towards its excessive nudity, the short went on to win 14 awards including Best Narrative Short at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, while it was also nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in March 2006, losing out to Martin McDonagh's Six Shooter. Cashback also went on to inspire the full-length feature of the same name, which premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival before receiving theatrical runs in the UK and North America.


Click here to view more short films and public domain features.

Short Film Showcase - The Big Shave (1967)

The Big Shave a.k.a. Viet '67, 1967.

Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Peter Bernuth.

For his final project as a student of New York University's film school, Martin Scorsese produced the six-minute short The Big Shave as an anti-Vietnam piece for an "Angry Arts Against The War" demonstration. Dialogue-free and employing only a single location and character, Scorsese took a simple premise and crafted an accomplished and unsettling piece that is said to be a comment on the self-destructive nature of U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

Set to the musical styling of Bunny Berigan and his jazz classic I Can't Get Started, The Big Shave sees a young man (Peter Bernauth) enter a bathroom and begin shaving, only to repeat the action over, mutilating his face into a bloody mess. Scorsese makes great use of the stark contrast in colour between the deep red blood and the pristine whiteness of the bathroom, and utilises inventive editing techniques such as repeat cuts to enhance the graphic imagery.

The success of The Big Shave paved the way for Scorsese to move into feature filmmaking by completing a project that had began in 1965 as a student film entitled Bring on the Dancing Girls, which went through a number of changes before being issued in 1968 under the title Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

Click here to view more short films and public domain features.

Short Film Showcase - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, 1963.

Written and Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Zeph Michelis, Sarah Braveman, Fred Sica, Mimi Stark and Robert Uricola.

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is one of the earliest shorts from legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese and was shot on 16mm while he was studing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1963. Considered by the director to be his first real film (he had previously made the 'miniature epic' Vesuvius VI in 1959), the 9-minute surrealist comedy is described as "a tale of pure paranoia" and revolves around a writer, Harry (Zeph Michelis), who becomes obsessed with a picture of a boat on a lake, leading to a frustrating bout of writer's block.

For its time, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is a remarkably inventive student film, employing rapid-fire editing and clever cinematography techniques to give an early indication of Scorsese's dynamic visual style. Scorsese would follow this up with a further two shorts - It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964) and The Big Shave (1967) - before making his feature debut in 1968 with Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

Click here to view more short films and public domain features.

Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)

The Adventures of André and Wally B., 1984.

Written and Directed by Alvy Ray Smith.

The Adventures of André and Wally B. is an early computer-animated short created in 1984 by the LucasFilm Computer Graphics Project, which would later become Pixar Animation Studios following the purchase of the company by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. Directed by Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith and featuring animation by John Lasseter and sound design from LucasFilm regular Ben Burtt, the 2-minute short centres on a character named Andre, who is awoken from a restful nap in the forest by a pesky bee intent on stinging him.

The short film is notable for its groundbreaking animation techniques including the first use of CG motion blur, and premiered at the 1984 SIGGRAPH conference in Minneapolis. It was also shown theatrically before Terry Gilliam's cult sci-fi Brazil (1985), and was reissued a decade later alongside Pixar's debut feature Toy Story (1995).


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile

Click here to view more short films and public domain features.