Yesterday I was sent quite an interesting task by one of my colleagues at the Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival. He sent me a list of about twenty short films to watch and evaluate, in order to see if we could include them in the festival. It was a task right up my street, and I just finished the last one. They were a bit hit and miss, to be honest: some of the films were great, while others were downright weird. One, for example, was about one man paying another to pretend to be his child. Yet I must say I really enjoy tasks like this: I’m very interested in this short, abrupt narrative form. There seems to be a type of poetry to it. I also think, with the advent of Twitter and Youtube, it’s the way things are going – we don’t have time these days for longer narratives. It all puts one in mind of Hemingway’s very abrupt, staccato writing style, and the way he, too, sought to go directly to the point. In a way, it also evokes the style of writing many people use online, in blogs and twitter.

This type of film does away with anything superfluous and tries to address one’s emotions directly. That’s why I found this task quite fascinating, and why I got through it so quickly.