MOVIE REVIEWS : Short Films Hit the Mark in Loyola Program

Loyola Marymount University is offering a terrific program of student films at 8 tonight at the Directors Guild, 7950 Sunset Blvd. Ranging from 4 to 12 minutes in length, they stand as fine examples of work by young people expressing themselves on film rather than turning out promos for motion picture industry jobs. These films have been made for less money, but in many instances more imagination than their counterparts at other film schools.

Several of the 10 films in the program are extremely successful examples of economical story-telling. Brian Fitzhugh’s 4-minute “Tumbleweed” is a succinct, beautifully textured vignette in which we witness some activity at a desert roadside gas station through the eyes of a towheaded little boy.

Similarly, in the same amount of time, Rod Cohen’s “Eclipse” captures the abrupt, brutal horror of war and its lingering aftermath 20 years later. In 5 minutes, Shana Hagan’s “Grace” evokes a sense of mortality as an elderly woman goes about her nightly routines, preparing for bed unaware that it will be for the last time. And in the experimental “A Priori,” also 5 minutes long, Richard Mortillaro moves us backward in time as he progresses from one image within another to create emotional, undeniably nostalgic impact.

William Lakoff’s ambitious, stunningly effective 5-minute “Pearls Before Swine” evokes the pain of love lost by abandoning traditional linear story-telling in favor of a flow of fragmented moments recollected with pain and a sense of loss. John Storm’s 12-minute “Lame Duck” is a wistful, humorous account of two longtime friends, now in their early 20s, on a duck hunt during which one of the friends--the “lame duck” of the film’s tile-- confesses that for him life peaked at the age of 12.

John-Jack Shea’s deeply personal and highly powerful 11-minute “Vital Choices” reveals the inner turmoil of a young man who’s just been treated for cocaine addiction and who is struggling to stay clean. Greg Hansen’s 10-minute “Seven Souls” is a poignant and ingenious fantasy in which a middle-aged man tells us of the souls of six people, all of whom met an untimely death, which inhabited him at birth, keeping him company until, one by one, they leave him at those moments when they were supposed to have died. Only John Hammers can know for sure what his surreal, ominous, 7-minute “Und Ohne Krankheit” is all about; let’s just say it’s venturesome indeed for a student effort.

Leaving the best for the last, Tony Mortillaro’s 8-minute “Legends of Doo-Wop” is a hilarious, imaginative mock-documentary with flashbacks in which two middle-aged guys reminisce about their youth as rock ‘n’ roll back-up singers who supposedly provided the quirky sounds and refrains for some of the most popular songs of the ‘50s and early ‘60s.