Shortz! Film Festival

Winner - Audience Choice Brief

Rev. Jimmy Snow, a 1950s preacher who spoke out against the evils of Rock & Roll music, tries to deliver his sermon, but is interrupted by numerous falling block letters.

2014 Winner - 3rd Place Audience Choice

"Cold Spring" is a short narrative film portrays a transnational Chinese father who left his family over 20 years ago. One day he suddenly finds out his daughter is getting married. He wrestles with his emotions as he realizes she wasn't going to tell him. To save face, he quickly tries to reconnect with his unfamiliar daughter, and at the same time, has to learn how to take care of his 12 year old son. Our film explores a father's emotional reactions and struggles as a consequence to decades of absence in his children's lives.

2014 Winner - 2nd Place Audience Choice

Why did Kathy Knapp, a Dallas businesswoman, leave her charmed life to bake pie in a dusty town with no traffic light, no gas station and sketchy utilities? Pie Town came upon its name honestly in the 1920s when a cattle rancher sold pie to supplement his income. The area is teeming with Old West history and hardy characters. The film is about resolve, heartache, healing, and pie as a vehicle for peace. You’ll see an alien, a dummy, feel connections to deep space, and hear some finger-snapping tunes. You will want pie, and probably more than one slice. Welcome to Pie Town, New Mexico. The name is no joke.

The new neighbor, a Muslim, is invited to a Christmas party only to be ridiculed by one of the hosts. He promptly bursts into song, proclaiming resoundingly that "Muslims love Jesus too"!

Auguste and Louis are fishing, but the fish will have to wait...

A FILM ABOUT A CAT, YOU SAY?

Cherry Pop was no ordinary cat.

She ate nothing but filet Mignon and Evian water, traveled in customized Louis Vuitton luggage, and lounged in a mini-Rolls Royce Corniche. For her birthday there were chartered yachts and orchestras. Her lavish living made her a celebrity and she appeared everywhere in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, The Sally Jesse Raphael Show and television programs throughout the world. She was, to put it simply, the world's fanciest cat.

Her owners Huey and Vi Vanek, were no ordinary people either. While the lavish life they gave their cat seemed like mere eccentricity, the Vaneks were using the spotlight they were sharing with Cherry Pop to talk about the plights of homeless animals.

Yet all this happened in an age before the internet, and this unique story of animal devotion and love hasn't been properly documented for posterity. Until now that is.

When Jack discovers that his girlfriend is one of two people who have locked themselves in a decontamination room, he and the rest of a group of citizens kept in an underground military facility must decide how to handle a possible biological infection.

Specialists team of doctors places in quarantine a patient affected by a disease supposed to have disappeared: Love. Facing the threat, they proceed to a serie of tests on the patient to elaborate a vaccine.

In a forgotten place in the time, a man lives with the echoes of what was once his life.