Review: Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2022 – Weekend highlights

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After five days at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, there came a point when my perception of real life started getting filtered through the festival’s various genre categories.

Finding myself alone in City Screen’s toilets after coming out of a thriller screening themed around the dangers of technology, the quiet seemed eerie, and as the Dyson hand drier whirred into action, I found myself wondering if it was going to malfunction and suck me into some netherworld of malfunctioning, murderous domestic appliances.

Walking through the city streets, every overheard snatch of conversation sounded like the springboard for a documentary – while getting to the Cornish Pasty Bakery just as they had locked up felt like an unbearably sad drama about one man’s thwarted ambitions.

And I’m sure my ham-fisted attempts at small talk with filmmakers and fellow festival-goers would make for an excruciating five minute comedy short…

Here’s a genre-hopping guide to some of the highlights from the second half of the fest, from amazing animations to dazzling docs – which you can still access online with a virtual pass for the rest of this month.

Comedy and Drama

The DNA of both Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood are evident in comic short Face It – Abbey (showing in Comedy 1), a Talking Heads-style monologue about an ambitious woman plotting a career comeback, but wracked with insecurity about her age and looks – the nuanced performance shows real comic flare, and the screenplay has a couple of one-liners worthy of Wood herself (on worrying about the loss of ‘airtime’ with her boss, Abbey ruefully acknowledges that “I’m the Masterchef final when there’s a royal demise.”)

Equally impressive is Candy (Comedy 1), the body-positive tale of a plus-size young woman’s dream of performing a burlesque strip-tease, deftly interwoven with her bid to rescue her best friend from her misogynist, controlling partner; both threads were resolved in a moving and uplifting conclusion, and this feels like something which could be the basis for a future E4 or BBC3 hit.

Who? How? And Where? (Drama 3) combines a stylish visual aesthetic with sly, quietly furious black humour as a group of women gather to play a Cluedo-style board game, with the real mystery hinging on the loss of one of their number’s virginity, while Invisible Border (Drama 8) is a harrowing account of a family being handed an immediate deportation order in the dead of night, bolstered by empathetic, lived-in performances, not least the morally compromised police officer through whose eyes the story plays out.

A Chinese-American drag queen’s return to their hometown is elegantly portrayed in Little Sky (Drama 3), which boasts a haunting, show-stopping musical turn by its lead, and Bus Girl (Drama 12) tells its story of an aspiring chef grabbing her chance for recognition with humour, charm and a feel for the everyday romance of big city life.

Listening Pitch

The three documentaries premiered at the Listening Pitch event at the National Centre for Early Music on Saturday night were all standouts in one of ASFF’s richest and most satisfying categories.

All based on the theme of how listening helps us to understand different points of view, the films were inspiring, captivating and thought-provoking by turns, from Birdsong’s reflective study of the ancient, almost mystical whistling tradition of the Hmong people of northern Laos, through The Short-Wave Listener’s beguiling depiction of its subject’s quietly dedicated passion for short-wave radio, to Speed of Sound’s dynamic portrait of gold medal-winning Paralympian Carina Edlinger, which used immersive sound design to simulate the visually-impaired skier’s experience as she zoomed down the snowy slopes. 

With the directors of two of the films – as well as Edlinger herself – present for Q&A sessions afterwards, this was a very enjoyable and stimulating night out, finished off by a blast of appropriately adventurous electronica from Leeds DJ duo Human Capital.

Documentary

Elsewhere, the regular documentary strands continued to impress with the breadth and power of their storytelling – I suspect that Forest Coal Pit (Documentary 3) will have been a highlight for many who saw this touching, funny portrait of two elderly Welsh brothers on their ramshackle farm, shot on beautiful grainy celluloid film which gave it the feel of a treasure unearthed from the archives.

There is a playful approach to Look for the Diamonds (Documentary 3) which is entirely in keeping with the outlook of its subject Joel Goldberg, a charming and endlessly creative Liverpudlian whose ability to lose himself in music and imagination helps him maintain a positive attitude to life with a kidney condition which requires him to be on daily dialysis.

In Documentary 2, the poetic, visually striking On Black Pain gave a racially informed perspective on a similar topic, as its three Black subjects talked plainly and candidly about their daily experience of living with chronic pain – as one put it, “I’m still mind blown it doesn’t get easier.”

Animation

It’s always a treat to see stop-motion animation up on the big screen, where the hand-crafted beauty of the characters and sets can be appreciated in all its glory – and there were some fine examples in the Animation 1 screening.

I loved the intricately detailed hand-drawn characters waiting around in a deliciously grotty bus station in Do Not Feed the Pigeons, while recently retired Doctor Jodie Whittaker gives exuberant voice to Type’s irrepressible heroine, navigating her way through a series of crippling allergies.

Also impressive in this screening was politically charged short The Seine’s Tears, a dramatisation of the 1961 Paris massacre of Algerian workers by the French National Police, which blends CGI and stop-motion to powerful, cinematic effect.

Artists’ Film

A category which can alternately baffle and dazzle, the Artists’ Film screenings are always an invigorating experience, with some real gems to be found.

The Gift is very much the jewel in the crown of the Artists’ Film 2 selection: a stunning-looking 30 minute drama with a stylish retro feel that has a hint of 2001: A Space Odyssey, this is an absorbing and ambitious piece with a visual flair and archness that offset its sometimes ponderous tone.

What was it about? Well, there were these three chaps trying to work out what gift their country should give to another one – or maybe the world? – and they were making their respective cases to these super-cool women in a sort of 60s-style lecture theatre, but to be honest I got a bit distracted by the immaculate costume design and stupendous sideburns, so I might have to get back to you on that.

In Artists’ Film 3, Nice to Meet You All is an honest and affecting study of life with Dissociative Identity Disorder which inventively visualises its subject’s condition, while the upbeat voiceover speaks affectionately of her different personalities as though they were old friends.

In the same screening, A Lost Home is a captivating portrait of Peckham-based artist Raqib Shaw, interspersing footage of his beautifully intricate paintings with musings on the nature of art and the meaning of home – which for Shaw resided in the companionship of his beloved Jack Russell, Mr C.

Thriller

Molaphone’s (Thriller 2) tale of a man stuck in a spiralling circle of call centre hell while trying to cancel his phone contract drew plenty of laughs of recognition from the audience, its pulsating electronic soundtrack gradually upping the tension as the protagonist comes to suspect his friendly customer service operatives are toying with him like a cat with a half-dead mouse.

As ASFF came to a close on the Sunday night, the National Centre for Early Music provided an atmospheric setting for the Thriller 3 screening, a compendium of enjoyably spooky tales.

All the films in this selection impressed – in particular Deep Clean, a ghost story about a troubled cleaner (Sherlock’s Louise Brealey) trying to clear out the house of a recently deceased hoarder, which combines some chilling moments with emotional heft.

Taiwanese horror Part Forever, in which a woman watches over her sister’s body in a mourning hall, was by turns terrifically creepy and magnificently deranged, and things came to a haunting conclusion with the handsomely shot period drama Fishwife, an enigmatic and folkloric tale of a lonely woman living an isolated existence among mist-shrouded mountains – until one night, a knock at the door announces a most unusual visitor.

And with that, I headed out into NCEM’s churchyard in the dark and dank November night, being careful not to look too closely into the shadows. After all, it’s only the wind – isn’t it?

The Aesthetica Short Film Festival is available to watch online until 30th November. Tickets start from £25 for 24-hour access and are available from ASFF’s website, which also has a full list of the festival winners announced at the closing awards ceremony.