Shorts Block 1: Masks

These films brilliantly–and often hilariously–explore artifice, performance, and subterfuge in all their variations. Actors audition for roles and agonize over callbacks, crime victims recreate their traumas for reality TV, secrets are hidden, attractions concealed. The ten extraordinary shorts in this program compel the viewer to watch actively, to look behind the masks.

Screenings

Q&A with Lisa McElroy (co-writer and illustrator, The Callback), Madeleine Coghlan (writer/director/producer/actor, The Other Girl), Zander Hawley (composer, The Other Girl), and Daniel Collins (co-director/writer, Trauma Bonds) to follow the screening.

Friday 10/24 at 7:45 pm
Saturday 10/25 at 2:15 pm
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Films

Image of a person outside looking down.

Azi

USA | 14 MINUTES | English

During a weekend vacation with her best friend’s family, seventeen-year-old Azi gets caught up in an unexpected game with another guest many years her senior.

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Image of person holding taxidermy deer head outside.

Beefmastor Inn

MT Premiere | MTFF Alumni | USA | 4 MINUTES | English

Two siblings try to sell a mounted deer head.

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Image of two people standing outside smoking.

The Callback

MT Premiere | USA | 13 MINUTES | English

Fiction, animation, humor, and poetry blend into a comedy, calling out a film industry in which women are underrepresented and underwritten.

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Image of two people at concessions stand with person behind counter.

Candy Bar

MT Premiere | MTFF Alumni | Australia | 6 MINUTES | English

A young girl thinks a man in the candy bar line looks like her dad. Their sweet interaction makes him long for fatherhood.

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Image of a person with a black hat and dark coat looking forward.

i want to go to moscow

MT Premiere | USA | 12 MINUTES

When disillusioned actor Mara is thrown into a classroom of kids rehearsing a sanitized version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters–her favorite play about existential longing–she swan dives into her own crisis of aging, nostalgia, and the loss of childhood dreams.

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Image of a fist with a ring with red background.

No Hands

MTFF Alumni | USA | 6 MINUTES | English

Over drinks with a friend, a young woman reveals a secret skill that must be experienced to be believed.

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Image of person looking up in smokey environment in black and white.

The Other Girl

MT Premiere | MTFF Alumni | USA | 20 MINUTES | English

In the 1960s, a young actor gives her all at an audition.

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Image of person on the phone with a colorful shirt in a kitchen.

The Pic

MT Premiere | MTFF Alumni | USA | 8 MINUTES | English

Single mom Jen gets an unexpectedly provocative pic from her friend Steve. Through the course of a phone conversation, she discovers that context changes everything.

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Image of two people in cowboy hats sitting on a couch in a gym under a basketball hoop.

Randy As Himself

MT Premiere | MTFF Alumni | USA | 11 MINUTES | English

A Hollywood production crew comes to West Texas to recreate the grisly murder of a local woman. Using locals to re-enact the crime, reality TV meets reality in this bizarre romantic comedy about the (show) business of murder.

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Image of a person in a shower holding their face.

Trauma Bonds

MT Premiere | MTFF Alumni | USA | 16 MINUTES | English

The morning after a kidnapping, a detective’s investigation tests the bonds of a marriage.

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Sponsors

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