As the first of a series of regular events, ShellsuitZombie brings you a film screening from the largest short film network in the world, Future Shorts.
The creators of Secret Cinema, Future Shorts are world renowned for supporting short film and the lineup for this festival is no exception. A haul including Oscars, Baftas, Sundance and Annecy Festival awards just goes to show that the films you will see are amongst the best in the world.

Official Programme

1. Deeper Than Yesterday

Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said  “The more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.

Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.

2. The External World

A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, The External World is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”

3. Incident by a Bank

A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.

Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale.

4. The Eagleman Stag

The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film that depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film produced while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman.” Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.

Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.

5. God of Love

Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as delivering one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.

Oscar Winner in 2011 for Best Live Action Short Film.

6. Luminaris

Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), Luminaris tells the story of a man living in a world controlled by time by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, “Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”

Winner of the Audience and Fipresci Award at Annecy 2011 International Animation Festival

The best thing is, the whole thing will be introduced by one of the Future Shorts team. Plus you can go to the bar and still see the screen! Yeah boi.

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

see you there chums.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses. The internet has been waiting for this tumblr ever since duck-dog-mask-gate.

A few days ago ShellsuitZombie (along with Paris-based Triangle Mag and italian blog FrizziFrizzi) was invited out by Vice Magazine to a beautiful city on the outskirts of Venice, Bassano, to visit the HQ of 55DSL, a streetwear company founded by the son of Renzo Rosso, the guy at the head of Diesel.

Andrea Rosso, unwilling to accept a job in his fathers company, chose to take his own path producing a line of clothing inspired by surf skate and snow and with emphasis on collaboration with exciting artists, designers and photographers. The company is now 16 years old and has stores in 22 countries around the world. Not bad eh.

Upon arrival we were immediately treated to traditional italian food (meatballs and lasagne ftw) before getting our hands on the SS2012 55DSL collection. A collection of their collaborations including Will Bryant and Gavin Watson continue the long line of artists and creatives 55DSL have worked with and supported during their time – not only a refreshing change to the nameless tees of rival brands but also a nod to the keen eye of Andrea, who (along with his design team) select each artist personally. After pocketing some clobber we had a chat about the brand before heading off to Bassano to stand on the bridge and sip a delicious local drink called Mezze mezze*.

After that we had a long and delicious dinner before a grappa to send us to bed. My hotel-mate, a lovely blogger from Triangle Mag in Paris, then stayed up until 4am writing articles for her ‘day job’. Not me, it had been a long day.

Check out our flickr photos here.

*definitely could have got that wrong.

Vice magazine, for those who somehow don’t know, are purveyors not only of brave straight-talking guides to some of the seedier, stranger or more horrifying parts of the human condition but have also applied this no holds barred approach to the cultural spheres of fashion, music and anything else ‘the kids’ are into.

The Vice tone of voice, so raw and refreshing when reporting on conflicts in Libya or Congo, seems to feel much more at home ribbing wierdos for wearing crocs or having a sperm tattoo, most noticeably in its infamous ‘DO’s and DON’Ts’ column. Sadly it’s less prominent position in the recent site redesign means I can’t be pretending to read a worthy music column while secretly looking at naked fatties, so it was with guilt-ridden satisfaction that I accepted their offer to send me a review copy of the new print accompaniment to everyone’s guilty secret corner of the internet.

First of all, the book is small and RRPs at £9.99 (which means six quid on Amazonznz) – having worked briefly in an art publishing house I know this aims it at the impulse point-of-sale ‘that’ll go in the loo’ market. And actually, that is what it’s perfect for. When that second log just won’t budge and you’re bored of angry birds, this book will provide a good chuckle. From the aforementioned naked fatties to drag queens through sweat, hair and terrible tattoos, this book has the lot, all captioned with the sort of snide hostility the online column is famous for.

It lacks the depth of its recent big brother ‘The World according to Vice’, reviewed here, but is a good taste of one of the sections of Vice with (I would imagine) the biggest repeat custom. Plus your seedy uncle who thinks he’s in with the kids will love all the boobs, should you present it as his christmas gift.

Tessa is a designer and illustrator from Aalst, a tiny town in Belgium famous for Carnivals and Onions. Now based in Berlin, she creates a mixture of collage and design with a very free exploratory style. I got lost in her flickr in particular which is chock a block with small visual observations and experiments as well as deliciously pretentious names (the below piece is entitled ‘You don’t know what you desire if what you desire does not yet exist’. Go check her out.

Sharon McCabe is a current Graphic Design and photography BA student at Leicester DeMontfort university and has a lovely portfolio of her photography which shows a mature photographic eye for someone so young. We’re looking forward to seeing the design part of her site expand in the next year.

Watch this doc about 12 East London ‘shirt-done-up-all-the-way-to-the-top’s who have formed a kick-ass collective called This is it. There will be dozens of these things happening around the east end, what with all the squats and hipsters, but these guys are different in that they’re really creative. A video they made to celebrate their new working space went a likkle bit viral and led to a show in Jaguar shoes and the above edgy Vice mini doc about their work.

Now where can I get my hands on that hammer costume?

See here for the full video:

Bad Things That Could Happen from This Is It on Vimeo.

Forget Richard Curtis and that bad guy off Mission Impossible 3, this boat is the real deal. Permanently moored in East London, Lightship95 is a recording studio like no other. Check out this short doc (above) featuring Manc rockers Mazes by Vice magazine, the first in a series of 3 films under the banner of ‘found’, in which the boat studio is put through its paces.

Finally, all the greeking at university pays off! Spotted this on the Creative Review feed (which part of is paywalled now, wtf!) and it really jumped out. To be fair though I’m a sucker for words I don’t understand and wood panelled floors.

Check out more work by Jotateam here.

There was a bit of a buzz last month about the discovery of over 100,000 photos taken by a previously unknown amateur named Vivian Maier.  The vibrant photos of life on the streets of Chicago and New York were discovered in an auction when her storage locker was reclaimed due to missed payments.  Critics are saying that she could give renowned street photographers such as Robert Frank and Walker Evans a run for their money. A guy called John Maloof has been painstakingly scanning and cataloguing the work (he’s the guy with the dollar signs in his eyes in this lengthy video). He puts more up on his blog every few days, I’d recommend having a look.

Little White Lies is one of London design agency and independent publisher The Church of London‘s several titles and the mag from which the agency was born. In this video they show the process of developing the Black Swan issue, one in a long line of beautiful pieces of design (I can’t think of another title with such consistently striking and touchable covers). Looks like a lot of fun too.

Our Liverpool VS night was a huge success, resulting in (amongst other things) rude sketches, wall sitting, bloody noses, free t-shirts, posters, magazines and books, a lot of beer, even more chat and many new acquaintances both young and old(er). We hope to go back to Liverpool in the near future, but for now our sights are well set on London’s equivalent next Tuesday. So far the grads are up 76 points to 53, so industry had better buck their ideas up.

To check out more Liverpool photos head to our flickr page.

‘Director Thomas Hilland was asked to test drive the Nokia N8, and make a film that made the most of the smartphone’s impressive HD camera. The film features music by Kap Bambino, remote-controlled dragonflies, a stunning Norwegian landscape, and some men in colourful costume.’

Yeah, and the men have great beards/facial expressions and there are colourful fish. Isn’t it mental that just a few years ago Snake on the Nokia 5110 was the bees knees.

Well, Vimeo announced their winning shorts from their 2010 Video Awards (judged by an extraordinary array of cinematic names including David Lynch, Roman Coppola and… erm… M.I.A) and the winner was Last Minutes with ODEN. I’m not afraid to admit (having a similar hound myself, 16 and going strong) that I was fairly close to big slushy man-tears while watching, even if the dude is a mega-hipster.

Others commended included ‘Between Bears’ a favourite of mine and worthy winner of best animation (see below). See all winners here.

Mike Diver and Pedro Aguilar from DMB have painstakingly recreated some of Caravaggio’s most famous paintings in a set of rich, lustrous photos for the Italian Moda Magazine.  They seem to have hired a motley bunch of roadies and bike couriers to add extra menace to the pictures.

via LoveArtLondon