Jim Teece Audience Award Best Short Film: Narrative

When Michael, a shy American tourist, meets Geneviève, the Parisian girl of his dreams, at the Louvre museum, he is determined not to let her get away. But when a misplaced cellphone threatens to upend Michael’s chance to see Geneviève again, he must undertake a journey through the streets of Paris, aided by the mysterious Maestro, an old street poet.  A sweet, funny meditation on life and the pace at which it is lived, the film looks at love and how much one’s life can change in a wink of the eye. Featuring Michael Gladis from the Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning show, Mad Men.

On a cold winter in northern Missouri a gun rests on a pregnant belly, rising and falling with the quivering breaths of June Allman, 24. Through the frosted windows of her car, June glares at a lone house across the road. She summons the courage and storms inside, where she confronts Robert Crogan—the man who raped her. The father of her unborn child. With a gun to Robert’s chest, June demands an admission of guilt, but June soon finds, as with all matters of life and death, that nothing can be so simple. Featuring Jeannine Kaspar who was awarded a Special Jury Mention for Acting in Paper Covers Rock at the 2009 AIFF. [adult content, language, violence]

By 2036, data loss has become a thing of the past. All digital media is instantly uploaded to the internet and permanently stored in the cloud, safely backed-up on servers scattered around the world. Only a handful of small businesses in the world have the expertise to recover data from pre-cloud devices. On a hot summer day, a young man named Kai visits Digital Antiquities, a store in eastern Pennsylvania specializing in data recovery and sales of vintage electronics. He shows Cat, the store’s only employee, an old compact disc left to him from his deceased mother and asks her to recover its contents. Kai is desperate to retrieve the information in order to unearth a long-lost secret and is at
the mercy of Cat for her help.

Raymond, a lounge-singing darts champion, finds his prayers are answered when he receives a mysterious package of passion-inducing darts. The catch is that the one woman he loves—Kelly, a drummer in his band, is already in love with Ray’s best friend Fozzie, the guitarist in the band. But when Ray uses the darts in a loony scheme to resolve this strange romantic triangle, he learns a surprising lesson about unrequited love and discovers his own place in the universe. Romance is in the air in this bohemian romantic comedy. Winner of the 2011 Academy Award for Best Short Film: Live Action and the 2010 Student Academy Award in the live action category.

Juried Best Narrative Short

A young boy awakens from a nightmare on a dark and stormy night. His cries wake his father who comes to his bedside. The father proceeds to regale the boy with a dark and epic bedtime story that is one part history, one part autobiography, two parts make believe and riddled through and through with the honest-to-goodness truth. This haunting, allegorical story leaves us with plenty to interpret. Featuring Will Oldham from Wendy and Lucy (2009 AIFF). [adult content]

Audience Award Best Short Film: Documentary

Through the story of a single bird rescued from the oily waters of the Gulf Coast following BP's Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010 - we are offered a glimmer of hope in the midst of an unprecedented ecological disaster. Nearly 9,000 birds were picked up in the four months following the spill. One of them was bird number 895, a young Brown Pelican found orphaned in the water, covered in oil. Pelican 895 is delivered by wildlife biologists to an emergency bird rehabilitation center where he is monitored 24 hours a day by a dedicated staff of both ordinary people and wildlife experts, many of whom travel the world responding to oil spills. 895 must be thoroughly and painstakingly cleaned of oil and must learn to feed himself before his release - or there will be little hope for his survival back in the wild.

Juried Best Documentary: Short Subject

Mr. James Armstrong is a rank and file "foot soldier" and the proud proprietor of Armstrong's Barbershop, a cultural and political hub in Birmingham, Alabama, where hair was cut, civil rights marches organized and battle wounds from police truncheons iced. This film follows 85-year-old Mr. Armstrong as he experiences the manifestation of an unimaginable dream: the election of the first African American president. This colorful and courageous activist of the Civil Rights era casts his vote, celebrates Barack Obama's victory, and proudly unfurls the American flag he carried across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 as he is inducted into the Foot Soldiers Hall of Fame. Mr. Armstrong links the magnitude of the present paradigm shift with challenges he faced in the past: from his sons' integration into an all white school to the Bloody Sunday march for voting rights.

Quiet and sincere nine-year-old Sam is worried about making his first confession at church. His conscience is clear, therefore he cannot hope for any relief from the experience. He and his friend Jacob decide to remedy that situation by committing a sin so that Sam has one to confess, but their initially innocent prank turns unexpectedly tragic. Winner of the Student Academy Award in the foreign film category in 2010 and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Film: Live Action. [adult content]

Juried Best Animated Short

In an unknown space in an empty city covered by heavy snow, there is nothing but a revolving door that slowly spins in the Wonder Hospital. A girl enters the mysterious place that alters the way of seeing physical beauty. She is given a choice between the two images of her face, "Before" and "After." Her desire for superficial beauty leads her to chase after the luring "After" images on a path of advertisements throughout the hospital. But in the end she finds something unimaginable and irreversible and realizes that beauty is something very different from what she expected. This surreal journey is animated using 3D computer generated images combined with live action puppets.