So there's this other short film festival organised by an interesting Australian bloke that started local and went global. Unlike its Kings Cross contemporary, the Manhattan Short Film Festival started out projected on the side of a delivery truck in New York City. Floating his idea on the tide of the internet, festival director Nick Mason turned his festival into an international event. Screens across the world will be screening the same films over the same week, letting a global audience decide who the festival's prizewinners should be. Sydney's screening is taking it close to the wire, bringing the festival to the Chauvel's ample screen before the results are announced in New York a little over a day later.
There's a strong lineup this year, with the surprisingly serious themes of David and Goliath telling the true story of a Jewish man who survived the Nazis thanks to a dog's intervention and Martyr Friday, where a New York University student in Egypt between semesters ends up unable to leave the country and finds himself filming Egypt's Green Revolution. Fearsomely strong actor Julia Stiles plays a mistress who takes her relationship problems to her lover's wife in Sexting, while the makers of Incident by Bank re-create a failed real-life robbery with a cast of 90 extras in a single enormous take.