SXSW Film Review: Reel Shorts 1

When the lights came up on this program – introduced as unusually heavy on the comedy – an audience member asked if she’d misheard the intro. Let’s just say the humor found in the (intentionally) humorous shorts was not of the ha-ha variety, more like grins generated by the dark mundanity of dysfunctionality. As in an unfulfilled woman’s ill-fated attempt to right herself by going into therapy with a therapist crazier than she is ("Countertransference"), or an unmarried twentysomething’s attempt to please his aging and out-of-it mom by faking a date ("Winter Lilacs"), or director Amylee Belotti’s hilarious, quick and dirty road map to her malfunctioning nuclear family ("Hi Mom"). Then there was "Cochran"'s droll portrait of a moribund working stiff whose life takes a grotesque turn after a serious injury and "That's My Majesty," a silent film about a princess who comes to the Big Apple to crown her people’s new queen. Getting the picture?

Monday, March 16, 1:30pm, Alamo South Lamar; Wednesday, March 18, 11am, Alamo South Lamar