For years, the Vero Beach Museum of Art has offered a film studies series, with full-length features screened in Leonhardt auditorium for an audience eager to analyze and enjoy.
Now, the museum is offering a single-day program of 12 short films, presented in concert format by the New York-based Asbury Shorts.
“The idea is to get people to see these films on a large screen instead of on an Ipad or a laptop through Youtube,” says Doug LeClaire, who founded Asbury and directs the films’ exhibition. “When a short film goes through the film festival circuit, if it’s lucky enough to do that, after that shelf life that’s where it goes – on the shelf. It’s rare for a short to be featured in a theater. Asbury takes shorts off the shelves. We want them to be seen by a whole new audience.”
The two-hour presentation will include live action and animation shorts.
One of those dozen films, “ASAD,” was nominated for an Academy Award last year and won five awards at top film festivals including Best Narrative Short Film at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Directed by Bryan Buckley, a director of TV commercials, “ASAD” tells the story of a Somali boy who is urged by an old man to continue fishing rather than become a pirate like his friends. Somali rebels soon shatter his optimism. The film was produced in South Africa, shot using Somali refugees who had never acted before.
Like “ASAD,” the 10-minute 2011 film “Time Freak” was nominated for an Oscar. Unlike “ASAD” it is a comedy. It is also absurd, telling the tale of two roommates, one of whom has invented a time machine and using it to revisit his moves from the day before trying to impress a woman he met.
The newlywed team that made “Time Freak” spent the money they’d saved for an apartment – $25,000, on the film instead, only to see it rejected at the Sundance, Tribeca and Telluride film festivals. Then they submitted it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it was picked as an Oscar nominee.
Both films joined other Academy Award-nominated short films in being aired on ShortsHD, a cable and Satellite TV channel that became available in the U.S. in 2010. But getting short films on the big screen in movie theaters is another matter. The time that used to be devoted to newsreels or Disney shorts is now exploited as a money-making moment before a captive audience. “As the years went on, the theater owners needed to make more money for concessions and feature films,” says LeClaire.
In the early 2000s, the Academy considered eliminating short films from the competition. “Martin Scorsese put up a fight,” says LeClaire. “These are amazing stories that go on a screen created by very talented filmmakers. We keep our show non-competitive so it’s not labeled a festival. We want the regular folks in the world to understand that Asbury Shorts is an evening of a mix of award-winning shorts of past and present.”
Billing itself as the city’s longest running short film exhibition, Asbury Shorts connected to the museum through a long-time volunteer with the film project and a newcomer to Vero, Helen Millman. She began working with LeClaire in the 1990s.
Millman came to the U.S. from Israel 17 years ago hoping to major in film studies at New York University. She ended up with a liberal arts degree but found a career in making commercials, and on the side, she performed as a singer/songwriter. On a trip to Vero Beach in 2005, she met her husband Michael Wood, a Vero native. They married and moved to New York, but now, with two kids and a third on the way, they’ve come back to be close to family here.
Millman met the museum’s director of marketing, Sophie Bentham-Wood, through their kids’ school, and proposed that Asbury come here. She is acting as the event’s producer here.
As for LeClaire, his parents have a home in Okeechobee. In 2010, he staged a free showing of the Asbury Shorts in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn there, and 200 people came.
Shorts are critical in the long profession to feature film-making, LeClaire says. Funds are typically tight when directors and producers are just starting out. One short, he says, was shot with four iPhones on a subway.
Short films can pump up a resume when it’s presented to Hollywood producers or TV networks. “Short films are the business card to introduce themselves,” he says.
LeClaire believes having a museum like Vero’s screen a short will enhance the film’s credibility.
At the same time, established filmmakers are interested in shorts “as an extension of their art,” he says.
One short, “A Poet Long Ago,” hit the festival circuit last year with a notable pedigree. Written by novelist Pete Hamill, the tale told in 14 minutes of two former Brooklyn schoolmates meeting again as adults was directed by Bob Giraldi and stars the instantly recognizable Steve Schirripa from HBO’s “The Sopranos” and Boris McGiver from “House of Cards,” the hit series produced by Netflix, as well as HBO’s “The Wire.”
LeClaire began Asbury Shorts 33 years ago in Long Island while he was working in TV commercial production. In its early years it showcased college short films and ran for nine years at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Then it began pursuing the big winners at independent film festivals and 13 years ago began to tour. As LeClaire puts it, it is “a roving showcase of award-winning short films.” It has since been presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Lake Shore Theatre in Chicago, and Summer Stage in Central Park, among many other prominent venues.
It has been hosted by a number of celebrities over the years including Matthew Modine, Aidan Quinn. Edie Falco and Harvey Keitel. While the screening will have a host in Vero, a local celebrity of some sort to “point out a few highlights” there will not be much discussion of the films. “There won’t be long speeches. We joke that we’d rather have malaria than a Q&A.”
Not to disappoint a crowd accustomed to the enlightening remarks offered by film studies coordinator Warren Obluck in the museum’s film series, or by the new instructor, Diane Thelen, guests will be able to meet with LeClaire and Millman after the shows. “We make ourselves available at the after-party,” says LeClaire.
The Asbury Shorts will be shown on Saturday, Feb. 7 at 1:30 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12.
