ShortHaus Cinema began in March 2023 as a passion project between two film lovers/wannabe filmmakers, Studio Services Specialists Patrick and Ruth (me). Working in Studio 300, we saw how many resources were available to our patrons: cameras, lighting, audio equipment, editing software, and pretty much everything you would need to make a film, all free to check out with your library card.
We wanted to foster a group of filmmakers through the lens of film appreciation: the best way to learn is by watching other directors, seeing what they do, replicating what you like, and throwing out what you don’t. With Patrick moving on to a new opportunity, we thought we’d sit down and have a conversation in Studio 300’s podcast room to reflect on the past year and more of the program. Please enjoy that conversation below, and keep reading to find quick snippets about each of our featured directors.
And be sure to join us on Tuesday, August 6, at 7 p.m. to discuss our next director’s work.
The Directors Thus Far…
If this is the first you’ve heard of ShortHaus Cinema, here’s a quick review of every director we’ve featured thus far. Each director is carefully selected for the uniqueness of their oeuvre and the availability of their work to all of our patrons. If any piques your interest, their work is still available to watch for free through the wonderful streaming service, Kanopy.
Les Blank
Les Blank was an independent documentary filmmaker who created intimate portraits of musicians and groups of rural Americans with a very naturalistic lens. We were particularly drawn to the short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), in which the German director makes good on a bet he had with Errol Morris that if he ever finished Gates of Heaven (1978), Herzog would eat his own shoe at the premiere. Herzog is very adamant about getting filmmakers to create, stating in the film: “If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw [film] stock, sneak into a lab and do it.” Patrick and I evoked the absurdity of the act in an early Instareel announcing the new program.
Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton was an insanely impressive stuntman who didn’t need camera tricks to wow his audiences with his use of practical effects. His work is legendary for a reason, and watching his films today is still an awe-inspiring experience. Creating a film without dialogue also presents an interesting problem that Patrick and I had fun working around in our short The Patrons.
Cheryl Dunye
Cheryl Dunye is a Black lesbian director known for toeing the line between documentary and narrative filmmaking. Her early work, in particular, weaves bits of her own identity and personal narrative with elements of the larger queer community and history. The Watermelon Woman (1996) looks at the history of Black women in film by creating a fictional historical figure for Dunye’s self-insert character to explore her relationship with filmmaking and queer identity. We mimicked the style of her early shorts in our Instareel for that month.
Ryan Coogler
Ryan Coogler is a director who made the break from smaller independent films to the huge blockbusters of Creed and Black Panther, imbuing popular franchises with the nuanced stories of the Black experience that he was focusing on in his early career.
Maya Deren
Maya Deren was a surrealist filmmaker whose background in dance allowed her to create beautifully evocative images in her films. The way she moves her body is consistently deliberate and adds to the ethereal feel of her dream-like worlds where trees turn into tables and mirrors are windows into the sea. Meshes in the Afternoon (1943) is a must-watch for any young filmmaker delving into the weird.
Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa was a hugely influential Japanese director and is very likely your favorite director’s favorite director. His career spanned decades, and I explored some of his later digital work in my first blog post, Filmmaking as Collage.
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès was the father of science fiction and special effects as we know them today. You can read more about him in Patrick’s blog, Conjuring Magic In Early Cinema.
Alison Maclean
Alison Maclean is a delightful Kiwi director whose intimate storytelling techniques are a personal favorite of mine, which you can read about in my blog, Symbols of the Domestic Space. I also compared her and Ridley Scott’s use of horror tropes in Alien vs… The Beast?
Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott is a very well-known director and has directed some of my favorite films, as well as some of my least favorite. Even so, his use of storyboards is unparalleled and you can read more about that in The Art of Storyboarding.
Jim Henson
Jim Henson was everyone’s favorite puppeteer, and you can read about his legacy on puppetry in The Lost Art of Puppetry.
Lutz Dammbeck
Lutz Dammbeck is a German artist and filmmaker who started out creating state-funded animations and later moved into well-researched collage-style documentaries. You can read more him in my blog, The Art of Germany.
Julie Dash
Julie Dash is an influential Black filmmaker who I covered in my blog, Reinventing the Language of Film for Black Cinema.
Alice Guy Blaché
Alice Guy Blaché was the first woman director and producer, going so far as to form her own production company in 1910. She was working at the same time as Méliès, but her work has not been nearly as well preserved as his. She’s often credited as being the first narrative filmmaker, discovering the language of cinema alongside her peers and using it to tell entire stories rather than playing with camera tricks or actualities—a precursor to documentary, where the film depicts a real-time everyday occurrence, such as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).
Farah Nabulsi
Farah Nabulsi is a British-Palestinian businesswoman turned filmmaker. When faced with the injustices done to Palestinian people, she was compelled to make documentaries focusing on re-humanizing Palestinians. More recently, she’s shifted to directing fictional films depicting the same struggles but with a bit more narrative heart as we zoom in on just one family and how they’re affected by daily injustices. Nabulsi’s work is now more important than ever with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
George Lucas
George Lucas needs no introduction, but you can read my thoughts on this director-turned-producer in my blog, The Art of Editing.
Charlotte Wells
Charlotte Wells is a producer-turned-director who makes beautiful narrative portraits of grief, and you can read me gush about her in my last blog, Painting Quiet Agonies.
Reid Davenport
Reid Davenport is a documentary director who focuses on the visibility of disability. In particular, he focuses on his own life with cerebral palsy and how a general lack of accessibility impacts using a mobility aid. His debut feature, I Didn’t See You There (2022), won the Directing Award in U.S. Documentary at Sundance that year.
To Be Continued…
As for directors yet to come, the next featured director is Rungano Nyoni, a Zambian-Welsh director, screenwriter and actress. Although we featured many directors in our first year who began their careers as artists, this new year of ShortHaus has seen more directors involved with the business side of things. Charlotte Wells is a producer turned director, and George Lucas is a director turned producer. Farah Nabulsi spent many years as a successful stockbroker before being inspired to create films as a form of activism. Alice Guy Blaché began her career as a secretary to Léon Gaumont before trying her hands at directing, but it was that start in the business side of things that helped her form the Solax Company when she moved to New York.
Rungano Nyoni shares this trajectory. Her first degree was in Business Studies before she got her Master’s in Acting in 2009 and started writing and directing shorts. Her work often focuses on specific social issues, particularly those relating to her birthplace, Zambia.
Her latest film, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024), won best director in the category Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes, and we should expect a release from A24 soon. Until then, you can enjoy her short film Listen (2014) and her debut feature, I am Not a Witch (2017), on Kanopy. And be sure to join us on Tuesday, August 6, at 7 p.m. to discuss this lovely director’s work!
If you watched the podcast until the end, you also would have heard the official announcements for the upcoming directors for the fall quarter, which are as follows:
- September 3: Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña
- October 1: Jonathan Glazer
- November 7: Sky Hopinka
I wish Patrick the best of luck in his future endeavors and hope to see him as a patron in future meetings. I also hope to keep ShortHaus going strong in his absence. If you want to learn more about the program or have a short film you’d like to share, feel free to reach out to Ruth at studio300@fountaindale.org.