Competition Shorts – Programme #3
A Knock At Your Door
Dir. Alan Hopkins, 16mins
An injured teenager arrives at the door of a nurse and her boyfriend. While she tends to his wounds, her boyfriend becomes inundated with messages and tweets and stories and videos of hate and conspiracy and violence. According to his algorithm, this boy is the reason for it all, and mobs begin appearing at their front door. This timely drama has its finger on the pulse of our hate-inflicted age of paranoia, striking right at the pit of the stomach.
Bog Communism
Dir. Roisin Agnew, 8mins
The subversive history of bogs in Ireland becomes a call to action, as the poisonous spread of data centres across the island is considered and resisted. Blending archive footage with 3D visuals, the film brilliantly reveals how the tendrils of colonialism have bled their way into the building blocks of capitalism forecasting a bleak future, one ruled over by parasitic machines hellbent on draining the environment/the culture/the world of energy & ideas.
Hostile Architecture
Dir. Liadán Roche, 16mins
As Dublin cannibalises itself out to private interests and shady corporations, two trans lovers find an unexpected solution to the Irish housing crisis. It may not be permanent, but it’ll do for the night. Sexy and surreal, the film dives into the phantasmagoric unknown of mystic ‘third spaces’ and the innate horror of trying to live in a city that doesn’t care about you.
A Pint Of Bitter
Dir. Conor Kehelly, 9mins
You go for a simple pint, sipping down that sweet nectar, when a peevish punter takes issue with the cut of your jib. From the perspective of a pint glass, a minor argument becomes a cosmic destruction of the self and a reckoning with the towering figure of the ‘old Irish fella’ in Irish culture. Where some people find Jesus at the bottom of a bottle, Kehelly discovers richly comic yet poignant material, rendering his findings through a beautifully anarchic animation style.