Fri 3/4-Sun 3/6
Whereas Hollywood has taught us that more is always better, there’s a subculture of filmmakers who feel the opposite. Take, for instance, local director-producer-screenwriter Michael Suglio, who five years ago started The Short. Sweet. Film Fest in the Market Garden Brewery backroom and basement in Ohio City.
Today, the festival enters its fifth year in the fashionable and brand new Alex Theater at the Metropolitan at the 9. Dozens of local, national and international films, all 25 minutes in length or less, will be screened 3/4-3/6 in the downtown Cleveland venue.
Cool Cleveland talked to Suglio about the imaginative film festival.
What’s the impetus behind The Short. Sweet. Film Fest?
It’s basically a means to showcase shorts, obviously, but also to really kind of give some Cleveland filmmakers a chance to screen and celebrate their films. Back in 2012, I was at a concert at Now That’s Class with a friend of mine. We were commenting on how most of the audience was comprised of other musicians but we didn’t have anything in the filmmaking community in Cleveland where really a lot of the local filmmakers can come together and celebrate and honor each other’s work. Everything is more like national stuff. So we started that year with a one-day showing of a few films. About 50 people came. And now five festivals later, we’re a three-day event, we’re showing 90 films and I expect at least 300 people to attend.
So with its original mission in mind, has the festival become a success?
I’d like to think so. Friday night is just local films. I was able to comprise a whole day’s worth of programming just with local films, which was fantastic. It also helps I do a lot of film work myself. So it’s really been a huge networking event not only for myself but also for other Cleveland filmmakers. What’s really cool is a lot of Cleveland filmmakers will consistently produce work because they know they’ll have a good opportunity to at least show their stuff each year instead of making a film and going, “Oh, what am I going to do with this?” That was one of the problems I ran into myself. I’d say, “Well, this is dumb. Why am I doing this?” So this is an opportunity for filmmakers in Cleveland to have some camaraderie with each other.
What other shorts will be showing this year?
Saturday is a good mix of films from local and national, and then Sunday I really tried to make it more of an international day. I have a lot of films from Japan, Iran, Canada and Great Britain. We also have local films on Saturday and Sunday. Also, following the program on Friday and Saturday, we have some local musicians playing during the networking portion of the event.
The other appealing aspect of the film festival is the fact it takes place in the Alex Theater at the Metropolitan at the 9. Who knew the E. 9th venue had a theater?
A lot of people say that actually. When you think of the 9, you think it’s a hotel, it’s an apartment and it has the Vault. The Alex Theater is one of the best theaters both presentation-wise with the screen and projector, but also the seats and the venue. I just absolutely love it.
There seems to be something about the short film that confuses and confounds movie lovers. The majority of people think the medium yields either esoteric or animated material.
If you look on the website, I have mission statements. One says our culture has gotten used to features and we know what to expect from those, but we really don’t know what shorts are. Shorts nowadays means like YouTube videos. Really, shorts came before features with the whole idea of very primal storytelling in a very basic way. It’s a basic root of storytelling in my opinion. Things start off as shorts.
That said, does the success of shorts prove that size truly doesn’t matter?
[laughs] Yeah, size doesn’t matter. That’s funny.