Doc Corner: Chinese Rappers, Wildfires, Queer History and More in These 8 Documentary Shorts
Wednesday, October 9, 2019 at 2:00PM By Glenn Dunks
Short films, whether they be documentary or fiction, are a curious form. What may work in a feature-length film may not work in a short and vice versa, and this can make critiquing them a sometimes tricky prospect. To sit down and watch one often means to set aside the sort of internal critical devices we may use for a feature-length film, typically eschewing the things we may normally look for in films.
By their very nature, we don’t get to spend enough time in their ephemeral worlds but I do not care for short films that feel like truncated version of larger stories. They don’t necessarily have to tell an entire story, but they have to feel like a completed thought, mood, or idea.
Some of the short documentaries that I have been watching have been just that, others less so.