Review: Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2022 Opening Night

The 12th annual Aesthetica Short Film Festival is, in the words of festival director Cherie Federico, a ‘love letter to cinema’ – and to one cinema in particular.

Taking us back to her childhood in her speech at the festival’s Opening Night Ceremony at City Screen, Federico paid homage to the one-screen theatre, several towns down the road from her home in the Catskills (“a town with one traffic light”), which was the source of her formative filmgoing experiences.

This small-town palace of dreams was staffed by a mother and son team, the latter of whom, we were told, sported a fabulous handlebar moustache.

It was the kind of colourful detail that brings a story to life, a technique which was echoed in several of the hugely impressive shorts chosen to open the ceremony, from a nostalgic recollection of a teenage adventure to a portrait of a flood-ridden Louisiana community.

It felt appropriate, too, for films made in These Unprecedented Times(™) that all of them seemed linked by a theme of human connection in even the darkest of circumstances.

The night got off to an upbeat and stylish start with Un-spoken Words of a Heartist (showing in the Fashion 3 screening), which showcased fluid, expressive dance movements set to a slinky, funky beat against a warm colour palette of golds, browns and oranges, all building to a joyful crescendo.

Things moved into more sombre territory next with Blood and Gold (showing in Drama 5), a tense, near-wordless feminist western set in the snow-capped mountains of New Zealand.

This beautifully shot tale was the most cinematic of the night, following its wounded heroine as she rescues a young woman from being raped.

Physical, subtle performances combined with evocative sound design – the impassive rush of the river, the dull, powerful thud of a rock against a human head – to make this a compelling piece of filmmaking.

Next up, Belle River (Documentary 4) was a compassionate portrait of the residents of Pierre-Part, Louisiana, a small town on the Mississippi, as they dealt with the damage wreaked by record levels of flooding and braced themselves for the possibility of worse to come.

The beleaguered citizens met their precarious circumstances with a mix of stoicism and community spirit, doing what they could to protect the most vulnerable – while the empty ‘Make America Great Again’ bluster of Donald Trump played out over a shot of a haunted-looking wooden effigy of the President, looming blankly over the rising flood water.

Harrowing drama 39 (Drama 6) recreated the horrific story of the 39 Vietnamese migrants who died in the back of a lorry in Essex in 2019.

Filmed in vérité documentary style – with the action taking place in shadows and the only light coming from the torches on mobile phones – the film plunged the audience into the migrants’ claustrophobic and increasingly desperate situation, as uncertainty and fear turned to a frenzied panic.

As the frightened captives banged desperately on the doors to be let out, the camera homed in on a young woman using her phone to leave a final, heartbreaking message to her mother.

After three such sobering pieces, the final two films offered a welcome injection of hope and joy.

Venetian Men (Documentary 1) was my highlight of the night – this recollection of a brief but never-forgotten trip to Venice in 1994 was a wistful, bubblegum pop paean to the intensity and innocence of teenage girlhood.

Set in a pre-Internet age when its 15-year-old heroines were ‘unmonitored, unwatched and untraced’, this charming short combined a pop video aesthetic (filming its young actors dancing with carefree abandon in a pastel-hued bedroom) with archive footage and personal photographs to bring its narrator’s story vividly to life.

The night came to a close with Still We Thrive (Experimental 1), a powerful and rousing celebration of Black resilience.

Footage of Black Lives Matter protests was intercut with Black actors (including Death in Paradise star Don Warrington) speaking direct to camera, creating a visual poem that felt alive with defiance, pride and humanity.

A technical glitch at the end of the night saw Cherie Federico give her closing speech without a working microphone or indeed lighting – just a small, human voice reaching out to us in the dark, which seemed a fitting end to the evening.

Earlier in her opening address, Federico described York as ‘a human-size city’ where, over the coming days, festival-goers could bump into each other, exchange ideas and make those little sparks of connection.

As someone who also grew up in a remote rural area (One traffic light? She doesn’t know she’s born), I do urge you to join the throng, make a spark of your own, and take advantage of this incredible festival taking place right on our doorstep. Tickets start from £7.50 for a single screening of shorts (£6 for concessions) – to see the full range of ticket options, head over to the ASFF website.