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The long and short of it

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One highlight of Resfest is its wide array of short films and videos. The selections are wide-ranging, from Adam Smith’s whimsical “What Goes Up Must Come Down,” in which everyone who takes a certain London cab winds up singing, just like the driver, to Motion Theory’s “Girl,” which features Beck singing in the streets near MacArthur Park in a magical tribute to Al Jaffee’s back-cover fold-ins for Mad magazine.

In a few succinct minutes, Happy’s “Jane Lloyd” traces the trajectory of the entire short life of a beautiful young woman (Lesley Petersen) entirely through stills. Heebok Lee’s “Tread Softly” celebrates William Butler Yeats’ great poem, expressing his love for Maud Gonne, in an exquisite, surreal animated work that even traverses the galaxy. Johan Kramer’s “11:59” starts counting down from 11:51, when a young man leaves his home for his nearby college, a vast modern structure, to generate suspense, ending in an amusingly unexpected payoff.

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-- Kevin Thomas

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