“You see it’s in the blood…Blood’s thicker than mud…You can’t leave ‘cause your heart is there.” These shorts prove that ties that bind come in all sorts of unpredictable varieties. In Michael W. Catlin’s I Remember You (US 2015, 11 min), Oscar® nominee Bruce Davison (Longtime Companion) gives a moving performance as a man who, along with his son, faces some harsh inevitable truths about his future. In Justin and Christian Long’s parodic Abe & Ike (US 2016, 11 min), the events of Genesis 22—the ultimate deus ex machina—are given a contemporary spin in the age of therapy and I-statements. Famed playwright Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men) posits a tense confrontation between two strangers with an unlikely and dangerous connection in The Mulberry Bush (US 2016, 17 min). A series of family traumas continue to reverberate with a mother and daughter as they attempt to rebuild their lives in Ali Pour Issa’s searing The Ground Is Breathing (Iran 2016, 15 min). And in Joe Garrity’s droll Twinsburg (US 2016, 16 min), a convention of identical twins is the catalyst for one pair of brothers who aren’t as alike as they appear. For all these protagonists, closure and clarity remain strictly relative.
Guests in attendance 10/11 & 10/12: Justin Long & Christian Long (Abe & Ike); Michael W. Catlin, Marisa Lloreda & Bruce Davison (I Remember You); Tim Harms & J.J. Kandel (The Mulberry Bush); Joe Garrity, Kyle Parker, Frazier Phillips & Meghan Hunt (Twinsburg)