By Leah Martindale, Third Year, Film & TV

The first collection of short films showed at Rebel Film Festival on February 23, ‘Perceptual Bias’ featured six short films with some unique audience perspectives.

The Missing Piece (or Le Rose et le Vert, dir. Julien Chavaillaz) is a funny, if confusing, French film centring around a man, Baptiste (Arthur Choisnet), and his obsession with a phone sex operator ‘Mina’ (Olivia Csiky Trnka). While the film’s aesthetics are notably French, and the concept is novel, the sudden switch to the surreal in the film’s final trimester is jarring. Baptiste meets ‘Mina’, (actually Joséphine) in a cafe, where under the table the two ‘fall’ into his studio, where he has a green screen, set, and boom operator ready to film their perfect first date. The film’s ending unfortunately reminded me of the ‘it was all just a dream’ trope, overused from Lewis Carroll to the present day.

Encounter (dir. Howard Wimshurst) is a masterfully edited, drawn, and crafted animated short. With all the best elements of storytelling - a hero and villain, catalyst for disaster, threat and resolve, existential questioning - slotted appropriately into an aesthetically pleasing two minutes, the film defies criticism. The transitions are skilfully executed and excitingly realised, garnering some genuine ‘oohs’, ‘ahs’, and gasps from me on first watching. All this makes for an entertaining and thoughtful, well-paced addition to the collection.

Cherry (dir. Paul Holbrook) is a rehashing of the character trope popularised by American Psycho (2000), centring on a sinisterly sexual succubus (Jaleelah Galbraith, also the writer) who narrates, directly to the camera, the popping of her ‘cherry’. As the story progresses however, the audience become privy to her habits, and learns she does not subscribe to the philosophy that you must ‘like it or lump it’, but rather ‘like them and lump them’.

Filmed in one six minute take, the film dances around the parameters of engaging tempo - although as the film slows into boring territory you begin to suspect there must be more to this than a simple, though messy, virginity loss story. At that very moment, her true intentions are revealed. The film is reliant on the audience’s willingness to believe what we are told, married to the wandering mind of a contemporary viewer.

Your Last Day on Earth (dir. Marc Martínez Jordán) is a surreal, oftentimes funny, occasionally sad film about mourning, time travel, and fox masks. While there are a few continuity errors (like blood dis- and reappearing from the protagonist’s hands), the concept’s distortion of time, temporality, and memory are unique and exciting to watch. Subtitled into English from Spanish, the film follows a bereaved man on what he believes to be a ‘time tourism’ trip, revealed later to be a recreation paired with horse tranquilizer induced unconsciousness. Sound fun? It is, in more ways than you think.

Do I See What You See? (dir. Simon Ball) was my personal favourite, an animated verbatim documentary about a rare form of dementia which affects the brain’s visual processing. The animation varies from CGI to hand-drawn effects, skipping along unified with the cadence of the interviewee’s speech. Equally interesting and exciting, saddening and fascinating, the film is a beautiful exploration into the sense of sight that utilises just that to its greatest effect.

Golden Girl, the final film in the ‘Perceptual Bias’ catalogue, is a curious piece centring around a young girl’s rebellion against her family’s expectations. Its aesthetics are the lovechild of Let the Right One In and The Fits, with dark exteriors juxtaposed to clinically bright interiors marrying the protagonist’s inner conflict. The lead actress brought a love of dance to the film herself, which is evident as even at only 12 her passion is tangible through the screen. Golden Girl is an inviting watch, a still pool slowly rippling from the centre. The short was also screened as part of the ‘Hell Is Other People’ collection on Sunday.

Interview with Paul Holbrook, Director of Cherry

‘Perceptual Bias’ was shown at Bristol Rebel Film Festival on February 23.

Featured Image Credit: Rebel Film Festival / Encounter (dir. Howard Wimshurst)

Are we aware as audiences of our different perspectives affecting the viewing?

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