Short Order: High School Daze

Kelly Sears’s Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise

Mike Plante

As soon as you get over the “back to school” frenzy, it’s October and the costume and candy craze commences. It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve been in school, but you run into all of this by merely going to the store. In our latest edition of Short Order, we offer a pair of short films from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that manage to capture all the pertinence of the seasons.

We’ve screened films by Kelly Sears in five Festivals, including her latest, Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise. Making use of real photos that she has either found or shot herself, Sears’ films are all made by hand. Beyond the imagery, she has a unique style with her timing and sound design. The way she tells a story gets into your head and you forget about the technique. After multiple shorts, Sears has achieved one of the best results you can ever hope for from a film – people want to know if the story is real. Working with viewers’ expectations of filmed information, archive photos, and narration, she crafts stories that make audiences keep asking – when did that happen? Why wasn’t it covered more in the news? I was totally there.

In the film Random Strangers, director Alexis dos Santos captures a more chilling view of young adult life – trying to connect romantically in the Internet world. With his past two features, Glue and Unmade Beds, dos Santos has exhibited a dexterity for making films on the complicated world of young love. And though he recreates the online video and audio, he still maintains pleasant style within the film, giving a personal touch through editing and the use of color. Honest, realistic performances from the actors bring it all together. You may be new to this type of virtual love across continents, but you’ll be able to relate, laugh, and wonder what is possible. Watch Random Strangers in its entirety here: http://vimeo.com/16462208.

News title Lorem Ipsum

Alexis Chikaeze as Kai in 'Miss Juneteenth,' coming to digital platforms June 19

Channing Godfrey Peoples on a Bittersweet ‘Miss Juneteenth’ Release and the Urgency of Portraying Black Humanity on Screen

After premiering at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Channing Godfrey Peoples’s debut feature is hitting digital platforms this Juneteenth—the day for which the film is named and which is very close to the director’s heart. “I feel like I’ve been living Miss Juneteenth my whole life,” she says.
The June 19 holiday—which commemorates the day slavery was finally abolished in Texas (more than two years after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was issued)—is celebrated in her hometown of Fort Worth with a deep sense of reverence and community, with barbecues, a parade, and a scholarship pageant for young Black women.

Donate copy lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapib.