After the past 16 months, it’s time to take a little vacation.
The organizers of the Indy Shorts International Film Festival have a way for you to make your escape without ever leaving central Indiana. People can laugh, cry, cheer and contemplate all facets of our society. Take the chance to scare yourself silly or explore exotic locales half a world away.
Most importantly, viewers can learn a little bit more about their neighbors, their community and themselves through these impressive works of art.
“It’s something to take your mind off of everything. It’s almost an escape back to reality — you get to escape back to the movies, which film is known for,” said Greg Sorvig, artistic director of the festival. “There are so many new topics, and you can really pick and choose based on your mood.”
Indy Shorts returns this summer with its entirely appropriate theme “A Short Escape.” More than 200 films are slated to be shown, starting Tuesday and continuing through July 25. Viewers can pick blocks of comedies, dramas, or horror flicks, check out the best of Hoosier-made films and even devote some time to shorts documenting the impact and effects of the whole pandemic.
Organizers of the annual Indy Shorts International Film Festival have remained flexible this year, acknowledging that people are at different levels of comfort in social settings at this point in the pandemic. So film buffs will have varying viewing experiences to choose from — relaxing in a cozy theater with other moviegoers, gathering outdoors for nighttime screenings, or watching virtually from home.
“We wanted to play it safe with lots of options. Hopefully, we could get back together and really celebrate the art form, and then still be available for everybody worldwide,” Sorvig said.
The Indy Shorts International Film Festival was created by Indianapolis-based arts organization Heartland Film, dedicated entirely to features and documentaries with short running times. The event is the largest short film-focused festival in the Midwest.
Heartland Film has been staging the Heartland International Film Festival since 1992. The event brings hundreds of unique features, documentaries, live action and animated work together, all under the mission of inspiring people through film. In years past, both full-length and short films have been showcased.
But as the festival has matured, a majority of the festival submissions have been in the short-film category — 40 minutes or less. With that growth, and the robust creativity put into making these films, it became necessary to separate the shorts out, organizers said.
The first Indy Shorts festival was held in 2018, and grew even larger in 2019. The pandemic forced a scaled-back outdoor version of the festival last year, but the hope is to get that growth back on track, Sorvig said.
To do so, they knew that they had to provide people with options.
“We wanted to make sure people were willing to come back in person, following safety guidelines by the CDC. I feel like things have reopened a lot in the last month or two, but when you’re planning an event, it takes months,” Sorvig said. “We had hopes of being in person, maybe doing virtual regardless. But we’re excited that we could do both.”
All 201 shorts, featured in 33 themed programs, will be available to watch virtually. People can also attend outdoor picnic-style screenings at the Indianapolis Art Center and IndyFringe, and those screenings include free HotBox Pizza and an Indy Shorts picnic blanket.
“You can come out and still have a communal, fun experience with people,” Sorvig said.
For that true theater feel, attendees can enjoy the area’s most luxurious new venue, Living Room Theaters at the Bottleworks District.
“It’s really a beautiful new theater, state-of-the-art with an incredible setting for films,” Sorvig said.
Heartland Film received more than 3,000 submissions for this year’s festivals, and those chosen for the program were broken up into a variety of blocks built around a common theme.
Programs include comedy, sci-fi, two different horror-themed blocks, award-winners, animals, justice and sports. Many of the films include familiar faces, including Will Ferrell in “David,” Noah Reid of “Schitt’s Creek” fame in the U.S. premiere of “The Archivists,” and conservationist and primate expert Jane Goodall in “Pant Hoot.”
The Indiana Spotlight program is centered entirely on movies made by Indiana filmmakers or set in the Hoosier state. Spotlight: Oscar-Nominated Breakwater Studios is a program featuring the illuminating, humanist stories of Breakwater Studios, a world leader in short-form documentaries.
New to the festival is the It’s Been A Year, which features hopeful and cathartic stories inspired by the pandemic. Films will take people to one of the most crowded and overdeveloped areas of the United Kingdom during lockdown, learn to speak the Filipino language of Tagalog and follow a couple matched on Tinder who are forced to move in together in Ireland during the pandemic.
“We noticed that there were enough films with pandemic themes that we did a program on them. We wanted these to be sort of cathartic and uplifting,” Sorvig said.
