Small and mostly sweet, this film selection buoys us up in the wake of the pandemic with an upbeat view of relationships
Just as many of us grasped for connections during lockdown, the pandemic has inspired Eunic London, an umbrella organisation for EU cultural institutions, to dwell on the meaning of relationships for this year’s showcase for European short films, put together by curator Shira Macleod. Not all are – as the strand’s subtitle would have it – loving encounters: break-ups, bureaucratic frustration and unsettling alien fauna crop up, too. And the one explicitly Covid-related work, Romanian director Alina Manolache’s mesmerising I Am Here, features relationships by their absence: the social vacuum on display in CCTV footage from the Trevi Fountain, Chinese pharmacies, a British golf course and other depopulated locations around the world.
Relationships take a politicised shade in Alexandra Matheou’s A Summer Place, a lush dalliance...
Just as many of us grasped for connections during lockdown, the pandemic has inspired Eunic London, an umbrella organisation for EU cultural institutions, to dwell on the meaning of relationships for this year’s showcase for European short films, put together by curator Shira Macleod. Not all are – as the strand’s subtitle would have it – loving encounters: break-ups, bureaucratic frustration and unsettling alien fauna crop up, too. And the one explicitly Covid-related work, Romanian director Alina Manolache’s mesmerising I Am Here, features relationships by their absence: the social vacuum on display in CCTV footage from the Trevi Fountain, Chinese pharmacies, a British golf course and other depopulated locations around the world.
Relationships take a politicised shade in Alexandra Matheou’s A Summer Place, a lush dalliance...
- 5/2/2022
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
From sweet-talking translators to a symphony of shepherds’ calls, the common currency in this refreshing selection of short films from 19 European countries is amusement
In the wake of Brexit, there’s a defiant note in the overarching theme – Happy Together – of this year’s survey of European shorts, brought to us by Eunic London, an umbrella organisation for EU cultural institutions, and pulled together by London-based curator Shira MacLeod. But, as they say, it’s complicated: the “happiness”, as flaunted in many of these 19 short films, feels somewhat ironic; long-suffering humour the common currency in muddling through a bundle of dissatisfactions, gripes and misunderstandings.
In Barnabás Tóth’s Chuchotage, two Hungarian translators make unlikely sweet talk from the Euro-sustainability waffle they have to parse for an attractive client. The scenario walks a fine line next to creepy sexual harassment – before these cunning linguists get their comeuppance.
In the wake of Brexit, there’s a defiant note in the overarching theme – Happy Together – of this year’s survey of European shorts, brought to us by Eunic London, an umbrella organisation for EU cultural institutions, and pulled together by London-based curator Shira MacLeod. But, as they say, it’s complicated: the “happiness”, as flaunted in many of these 19 short films, feels somewhat ironic; long-suffering humour the common currency in muddling through a bundle of dissatisfactions, gripes and misunderstandings.
In Barnabás Tóth’s Chuchotage, two Hungarian translators make unlikely sweet talk from the Euro-sustainability waffle they have to parse for an attractive client. The scenario walks a fine line next to creepy sexual harassment – before these cunning linguists get their comeuppance.
- 5/4/2021
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
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