Wavelengths shorts make me feel like any human encountering the concept of God, and I’ll double down on that metaphor, because, a mere mortal can think of God in two ways. Either God will overwhelm the mortal or the mortal can look God in the face and say “this isn’t a thing”. Let’s begin.

Experimental shorts can be about juxtaposition and Film Sculpture 2 is about that. And this is true even if the images that director Philipp Fleischmann present on screen feel uniform. This is a four part series where I only got to see the second installment. And this one, presumably like the others, looks like a Barnett Newman painting but in different shades of blue. Or sometimes, pink and yellow. Putting film strips on top of the other, the effect looks like a dark presence swings like a pendulum. Pleasant, but also kinda rude.

Joshua Gen Solondz’ We Don’t Talk Like We Used To is an interesting title. It’s also arguably has the most Drake-like title in all of the fest. This is the longest short of the four that I’m writing about. It tackles a lot of things and depicts a lot of images, as it goes back and forth in showing crowds and empty spaces and uses normal and negative colours through old film stock. There’s a film during this fest and in this programme that gives lightly better justice to the themes here. This short is fine though.

Next up is Steve Reinke’s Sundown, where he, among things, discusses Nitszche while showing black and white footage of silhouettes witnessing a lot of things on fire. The title comes from a song that I heard before but didn’t know was a Gordon Lightfoot song. It touches on pain and how artists share it, and how some may match that feeling or feel a diluted version of it. I also have other reasons for liking this short but I won’t write it in this space. I’m a professional.

Lastly, director Shambavi Kaul’s Slow Shift packs a lot within this nine minute short. Among things, a monkey stares back at a camera, and seconds later, rocks and stones fall on top of each other. It shows these details before going wide again to show the ruins of a World Heritage Site in Hampi, India. Abandoned the site centuries ago, making way for the monkeys. Someone at Letterboxd called this Kubrickian but I’ll add a Harryhausen comparison. This feels so unreal but in a mostly good way.