“
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” (2022 narrative shorts program)
Friday, June 17, 2022, 8:45pm Roxie
+Streaming
- I Wish I Never Fucking Met You 💝
- Naufrágio (Shipwreck) 👎
- Lucky Fish 💝
- Split Sole 🙂
- One Like Him 💝
- Firsts 💝
- Keep/Delete 👍
World premiere 💝
Two young Black men, Omar (David Stoneham, pictured) and Max (Bo Uong), meet outside a liquor store to talk about the widely divergent memories they have of their relationship, from first date to breakup. It’s passionate and heartfelt, definitely a
must see.
“
Naufrágio” (“Shipwreck”),
narrative dir. Sebastião Varela, 2021, Portugal, 14m.,
in Portuguese with full English subtitles, North American premiere 👎
Two men have a conversation about the end of one or more relationships (the two of them, and one of them with a woman). Or maybe the whole thing is just one of the men immersing himself in a memory. Or maybe his obsession with the memory is a prison unto itself. Utterly lacking in context, made no sense at all.
Not recommended.
“
Lucky Fish” narrative, dir. Emily May Jampel, 2022, USA, 8m.💝
Two high school-age girls, at the same restaurant for dinner with their respective families, make eye contact across the room. They meet up in the bathroom and then go to the empty upstairs dining room to watch the fish in the fish tank. With no one else in the room, they talk about their futures and family expectations, quietly building a bond. Sweet and poignant,
must see.
“
Split Sole” narrative, dir. Barnaby Boulton, 2021, UK, 13m.
North American premiere 🙂
Somewhere in the UK, a young Black guy and his white friend break into a stage theater to indulge in a little dance practice (not a euphemism, literally practicing a bit of choreography). The connection between the men is clearly real and deep, but most of the context of the story is left unspoken, making it unsatisfying to watch. Recommended.
“
One Like Him”
narrative, dir. Caitlin McLeod, 2022, UK/Jordan, 16m.,
in Arabic with full English subtitles, North American premiere 💝
Open with teenaged Karim on the phone with Ramzi. Ramzi’s mother found a letter from Karim, forbade them to see one another, and told Karim’s mother. Years later, they meet up in a bar. Karim has a letter for Ramzi to read later, but first there is an awkward conversation. Karim keeps flashing to imagined scenes of the two of them waist deep in the Dead Sea, revisiting some scene from their youth, then back to possible versions of the present-day conversation. Karim comes out as “مثلي” (mithli, “like me”). Imaginative exploration of “what might have been.”
Must see.
“
Firsts”
narrative, dir. Jesse Ung, 2022, New Zealand, 16m. 💝
Steven (or Cheung; Kelvin Ta, pictured right), a closeted 21-year-old from China studying in New Zealand, is on the phone with his mother on the eve of Lunar New Year, with a photo of his deceased father looking over the scene. Steven is anxious to end the call with his mother, not because his fake girlfriend Anna is coming over, but because he has a casual hookup planned with a man, with the objective of losing his virginity. He’s never even kissed a man and is nervous as hell, to the point of hyperventilating. Beautifully captures the longing and the terror of a closeted young man experiencing firsts.
Must see.
“
Keep/Delete”
narrative, dir. Kryzz Gautier, 2022, USA, 19m. 👍
Two women are ending their 4-year relationship, but instead of deciding custody of the kids or pets or furniture, they are deciding custody of their memories with a neural extraction process, coming to terms with the fact that one is much more invested in forgetting than the other one. It’s an interesting take on the question of how far you would be willing to go to press “undo” in real life. Highly recommended.
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