by Liz Wiest, Staff Writer

The legendary HollyShorts Film Festival came to a close after three power-packed red carpets: Opening Night on the 8th, Primetime on the 10th and the Awards Ceremony on the 18th. Though I sadly did not have the chance to attend in person like I had hoped, my classy remote Bitpix experience provided me with access to five provocative shorts that once again proved to me how dynamic the indie shorts circuit is, even post-strike. 

Triptych
Written by Atticus Hoffman and Roland Walters
Directed by Sophia Ray

All awards ceremonies aside, Sophia Ray’s Triptych takes the cake for me as the best dramatic short I may have ever seen. The film follows a controversial art dealer Margaux Kasser (Emma Suki) who announces her plans to destroy a Bosch masterpiece as performance art at a lavish party, then is forced to face a horrific reality when a man (Emmanuel Imani of Wheel of Time) discovers a dark secret from her past lives within the painting- indicating that her time is running out. 

Triptych was nothing short of a visually stunning masterpiece with moments that simply made my jaw drop. This is of course in part due to the inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s breadth of work, but the aesthetics of production designer Julija Fricsone Gavriss and cinematographer David Foulkes worked in harmony to create a perfectly unsettling feast for the eyes. It is incredibly difficult to capture feature length lore in a fifteen minute film, but with an airtight script that breaks down the Faustian bargains artists make for success, Ray immediately immerses you into the world and makes you feel as though you are a part of the three-panel tapestry yourself. Yet another cinematic win for Eastern European horror. 

Lesbophilia
Written by Tennessee Martin
Directed by Michelle West

In the absurdist Shiva Baby meets Search Party short Lesbophilia, a bisexual woman Eliana begins to question giving up the male anatomy forever while attending her ex-boyfriend’s funeral with her current girlfriend, who understandably, isn’t all too thrilled with the situation.

First of all, how the creative team managed to create a convincing funeral-home-meets-strip-club location (hilarious, by the way) simply blew my mind. I was admittedly more obsessed with the décor than I would like to admit. The performances by the two leads Vico Ortiz and Maya Nalli were also endearing and dynamic with palpable chemistry. The script was my exact taste of dark, deep and hilarious, which is not always the easiest for actors. But these two sold every line that I eagerly bought. While I do feel the unfaithful bi girlfriend trope is a tad overdone, the takeaway message outweighs any misgivings I may have. 

Editor’s Note: To clarify from my Curtain Raiser post, the short’s partnership with Queer Koalas, an NFT company, was primarily for a crowd fundraiser for a new lesbian bar and café in Los Angeles and is in no way correlated to the goal of the short film. 

Waving
Written and Directed by Rolfin Nyhus and Steven Brumwell

Rolfin Nyhus and Steve Brumwell’s Waving brings the audience into the mental nightmare of its protagonist Charlie, a man who left his wife and child behind due to his intrusive obsessive compulsive thoughts. His world is a forsaken lighthouse on a tumultuous beach that makes Eggers’s The Lighthouse look welcoming. Around every corner of the house is a triggering reminder representative of a thought or compulsion he must break, but alas, he is trapped. This is until a woman named Grace (get it?) finds him and brings him to safety, only for another, more tattered version of Charlie to inevitably take his place. As someone who lives with OCD herself, the primary takeaway I have from Waving is that…well, I get it. Though I didn’t like it. 

The film was painfully on-the-nose even down to the smallest production design details. Despite the powerful performance from Ralph Ineson, the script is too artistically vague to serve as tangible education but spoon-feeds too much to be pure symbolism. However, I very much recognize that subtlety and education aren’t a functional dichotomy.  It’s very possible what didn’t work about Waving could all boil down to the timing. Depression, anxiety, and even PTSD have been en vogue as plot devices since the dawn of the early 2000s, with lesser-understood conditions like ADHD and OCD being relegated to the backburner as jokes or quirks. The intent of the Waving creative team to stop this stigma and educate the masses is both noble and heavily appreciated on my end, and perhaps in five to ten years when there is more understanding in the zeitgeist, the themes will land with as much grace as Charlie finds in the end. 

One for the Road
Written by Corey Slater
Directed by Daniel Carsenty

In my experience, it’s difficult to dislike anything that’s descended from the mind of Stephen King, and Daniel Carsenty’s One for the Road is certainly no exception. The short follows two truck drivers who agree to help a strange man who stumbles into the roadside diner where they’re taking their break.  What follows, (unsurprisingly) are dark and dangerous consequences. 

The FOMO I had at missing this short’s premiere at the TCL theater is nothing short of unparalleled, as the perilous ambiance had me downright spooked remotely in the safety of my own home. According to the creative team, director Carsenty had reached out to King for his help transitioning from a documentarian to a narrative filmmaker, which resulted in him obtaining the rights to the story. Carsenty’s feature (similarly to One for the Road story material) breaks down the dark sides of humanity, and how very often no good deed goes unpunished. Aided by razor-sharp sound mixing and a haunting score by Sascha Blank, this film provokes all of your senses and leaves you thirsting for a feature-length of the same caliber. Which, given the reception, could certainly be a possibility in the future. 

Lady Parts
Written by Erin Rye and Robert Frings
Directed by Erin Rye and Jessica Sherif

Comedy pieces still managed to shine at HollyShorts even among the onslaught of impressive, darker content. One of the most prominent being actor/director Erin Rye’s Lady Parts, a short that follows a struggling actress named Liz who lands her dream role working for an up-and-coming director, only to find that her part of an “Executive” has been rewritten to an “Executive Assistant” and fused with sex.

The film opens with a strong, and admittedly catchy, satirical start of Liz playing a singing, dancing tampon in a commercial, and receiving the direction to “look as if she’s happy to be on period”. Following that, you’re as ecstatic as she is for her to finally receive the real star treatment, only for it to turn out like any woman in Hollywood would expect. For as much as I’m inclined to say the ending was a bit heavy handed, it’s an unfortunate reality that DEI initiatives are one of the most hot-button issues in Hollywood right now. I would be shocked to hear of any actress, or any other woman in the industry really, who has not encountered a situation like Liz’s, and I fear it takes something as direct as a woman monologuing at a film crew of all white men in baseball caps for people to even slightly acknowledge something is still amiss. There is real, palpable anger behind the pink backdrop and dancing tampon, and it is only growing stronger by the day.