What is cinema - what is short film?

In the early days of cinema, all films were short films. This is a banal acknowledgement and really nothing remarkable as such. But what is interesting is that, after over one hundred years of technical and aesthetic advances, some of the characteristics and criteria that identified short film back then are still valid today: short film is defined by its length. The short form is also a medium for innovation, as versatile as cinema itself. Looking at things from this historical perspective, we can perhaps succeed at circumventing some of the difficulties we face in defining what exactly short film is.

Attempt at a definition: the short film is a film that’s short

In trying to define short film, we automatically face the dilemma that, apart from its running time, there are no precise criteria or unequivocal characteristics that apply to all short films. Analogies from the world of literature are also bound to fail, because the short story that is often invoked for comparison is limited to the realm of fiction only – to stories. Deductions based on the poetics and dramaturgy of short film, while these are certainly helpful and can be applied with some success, are consequently valid only for the short fiction film.

The definition dilemma arises when we overlook the fact that “short film” is not a genre description or category but rather a generic term used ever since the early days of cinema to describe all possible forms and genres of film. What makes short film interesting, though, is not its reduction to an indistinguishable format, but above all its hybrid variety. In the short film, elements of early cinema live on into the present. It parades before us the broad panoply of life in every imaginable form: from boxing kangaroos, dancing cigarettes and flying hats, to trains arriving at the station and light reflected on wet asphalt, to magic tricks and fairytale journeys to the moon. It encompasses both black-and-white and hand-coloured films, documentaries, fiction, experimental films, animation, dramas and melodramas, thrillers and horror films, slapstick and comedy, as well as commercials, cultural and educational films and artists’ films.

Short film preserves the early diversity of the cinema, while history has increasingly forced “big-screen cinema” into narrowly constricted boundaries. The feature-length fiction film with sound has dominated the movies since at least the 1920s. Standards and conventions were developed that encompass all possible aspects – from artistic design to technical standards and commercial production methods, from screenplay development and shooting to distribution and modern marketing. This has all served to establish a single uniform concept of film that – although it accounts for only a small excerpt of all possible options – seems to stand for film as a whole. In the vernacular, the (marketing) success of this concept is revealed by expressions like “true cinema” or “a real movie”.

There is no room for the short film, however – as perhaps sub-category or genre – under this very narrow idea of film, which only defines one of myriad cinematic possibilities. Depending on one’s perspective, short film instead can be viewed as coming before, or being situated above or outside this historical reduction of film and cinema.

Short film thus lives on outside standardized mainstream cinema and has evolved into a kind of great white hope for all that early cinema promised in terms of aesthetic complexity and plurality of content. It is rife with potential – potential that can also be tapped, however, by feature-length film. By no means do all short films realize this potential, since they likewise can be part of the mainstream. 

Economic independence and creative freedom in short film

When a short film does manage to live up to its potential, however, (which, unlike with feature-length film, happens with regularity) it still has a special quality that cannot be attributed to its running time alone. Length as distinguishing feature is not a time norm, but rather a financial factor in its production that allows short film a certain independence from the film industry with its economic restraints.

Most filmmakers share this view. They choose the short form above all because it allows them to combine economic independence with artistic freedom. As a case in point, almost all of the filmmakers interviewed for the 2005 publication »Überraschende Begegnungen der kurzen Art« (“Surprising Encounters of the Short Kind”, edited by Peter Kremski, in German only) stated that they do not categorically differentiate between short and long films.

The less effort and costs required to produce a film, the less the economic pressure and the financial risk. Economic freedom leaves room for experimentation and innovation. That is the strength of short film.

Aesthetic and technical innovation – short film as source of inspiration

On the “big screen”, the technical and thematic standards as well as the formal conventions that prevail tend to resist every attempt at refinement and a deeper anchoring in visual culture, resulting in reduced cinematic expressiveness and a general “dumbing-down” of the cultural context. This reduction can very well still give birth to cinematic masterpieces that later become “classics”, but as a rule it leads only to films as mass-produced consumer goods. Without any stimulus from outside, i.e. from beyond the conventional system, styles, genres and categories become rigid, at some point merely treading water and drowning in their own conventions. The short film can serve here as a source of fresh inspiration.

It would be hard to find an innovation in film aesthetics that was not first “invented” and tried out in short film. Due to a lack of the requisite knowledge and research, this fact is often overlooked in historical writing on film and in film criticism. Innovations are assumed to represent an unprecedented “revolution” or are likely to be ascribed to a genius (when all the while a lesser-known short film was perhaps the true source!). Whether stop-action, close-up, jump cuts, direct cinema, non-linear narrative, hybrid film, handheld camera or dogma style – all of these were pioneered by short film and then absorbed by osmosis into the mainstream to serve its own revitalization.

The short film also plays a crucial role in the field of technical innovation. Digitization at the cinema, for example, would be inconceivable without short film. From electronic image processing and production (software) to digital formats (data media) to digital distribution (Internet, mobile phones), everything new under the sun was first tried out in short film. And the test content for the new digital pre-platforms is still made up of short films.

There are not only economic and technical reasons, such as lower production costs and shorter running times requiring less bandwidth, that make short film the pioneering format in the new media; its status is also attributable to its formal diversity, its topicality and the abundance of themes and material it presents. From the broad repertoire of short films available, suitable material can be found for every application, every intellectual level and every target group.

Variety

In Germany today, a broad spectrum of short film forms and currents coexist and intermingle, giving rise to just as many sales channels, screening forms and film scenes. It’s true that short film is also the chosen medium for so-called “finger exercises”, used as a calling card by young filmmakers just embarking on careers in other areas. But that’s not all it is. Short film is also a favoured medium for professional works. It is created individually or collectively, or perhaps by a team of private desktops at home or at film school, but also in high-tech production studios and artist’s ateliers.

It is viewed at the cinema or on television, but not only there. It blinks out at us from our computer screen as a Flash animation on the Internet, or as an ultra-short, entertaining micromovie on our mobile phone display. It also serves as a visual aid for serious instruction and as discussion material in educational work with both young people and adults. It can be seen in corporate in-house presentations and during manager training courses. The short film can even be an artwork in a museum or exhibition, or a collector’s item sold on the art market.

All of this leads us to the inevitable conclusion that there is no such thing as the typical short film. Every single sector, every one of the many short film genres and each variety of film has its own aesthetic, its own sales channels and its own audience. Each of these sub-areas may seem marginal on its own, but the sum produces an amazing panorama! – a repertoire of film forms that keeps reinventing the diversity of early cinema over and over again, and that has continued to evolve and innovate both aesthetically and technically.

Reinhard W. Wolf

editor@ shortfilm.de

This text was originally conceived for “Kurzfilm in Deutschland – Studie zur Situation des kurzen Films”, published by AG Kurzfilm – Bundesverband Deutscher Kurzfilm, Dresden 2006.

For information on how to obtain this publication, please go to http://www.ag-kurzfilm.de.