SHORTS COLUMN | “Tanghi Argentini” Dances Away With Four Prizes at Aspen Shortsfest

The Best Student Short Award also resulted in a tie, with Vineet Dewan‘s Iraq war story “Clear Cut, Simple” (shot at Santa Clarita’s increasingly popular Middle Eastern set) and Fellipe Barbosa‘s Brazilian bachelor manifesto “Salt Kiss” sharing the honors.

Other jury-award winners include Andrea Jublin‘s “The Substitute” (Best Comedy), Topaz Adizes‘s “City” (Best Short Short), and Mariam Jobrani‘s “The Fighting Cholitas” (Best Documentary). 

The festival also instituted two new awards this year: the Napapijri-sponsored Cultural Discovery Award which went to Dyana Gaye‘s “Ousmane,” a charming adventure story of an enterprising kid’s quest to write a letter to Santa Claus; and the Hard C-sponsored Lo-Fi comedy award, which went to Keio and Dag Astein‘s “Scyzoryk,” a deadpan black-and-white comedy about a hapless bystander who becomes increasingly involved in a beautiful girl’s ineffectual suicide attempts.

Aspen Shortsfest’s four-person jury consisted of three filmmakers (Adrian Belic, Cecilia Peck, and Lewis Teague) and Clermont-Ferrand program director Roger Gonin, who also presented a selection of the best of his fest in a special program entitled “Planet Cinema: New French Shorts.” 

Festivalgoers noted that the European shorts were remarkably strong this year at Aspen, with Germany accounting for seven out of the 59 films in the international competition. Even one of the American comedies, Philip Van‘s nine-minute “High Maintenance,” was actually funded out of Germany as part of the Berlinale Talent Campus.

Among the world premieres at the festival, two American live-action narrative shorts proved noteworthy.  Screenwriter Maurice Chauvet‘s nine-minute comedy, “$3.50,” takes video-rental late-fee negotiations to a whole new level, while Karen Dee Carpenter‘s twenty-minute female buddy adventure, “Sarah & Dee,” is a satisfying “Thelma & Louise” for the Avril Lavigne generation. 

Australia also made a good showing, contributing two pop culture documentaries that made their U.S. debuts at Aspen. Shelly Matulick‘s “Our Brilliant Second Life” is a five-minute look at a real-life couple who have found happiness creating alternative versions of themselves online, while Anthony Mullins‘s “Elvis Lives in Parkes” is an elaborate 25-minute piece examining how a festival celebrating the King of Rock and Roll came to be so essential to an Australian outback town. 

With Aspen Shortsfest’s reputation for having been a bellwether for such Oscar contenders as “God Sleeps in Rwanda,” “Wasp,” “Two Cars, One Night,” and too many others to count, it’s a safe bet that several shorts that debuted this month in Aspen will end up on next year’s Academy ballot. Although it’s just too early to start making Oscar predictions, smart money’s on “Tanghi Argentini.”

[Kim Adelman is the author of “The Ultimate Filmmaker’s Guide to Short Films.”]