by Zack Mandell
[box]Zack Mandell talks about eight extremely popular contemporary film directors who made their first big splash with acclaimed short films.[/box]Back in 2005, filmmaker Andrea Arnold won her first Academy Award. It was for Best Live Action Short Film for her 26-minute work “Wasp.” Honestly, if you have any semblance of a life, I wouldn’t expect you to know that. But Arnold is an incredibly talented emerging filmmaker. Her debut feature film, “Red Room,” sparked rave reviews, and won a prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. “Fish Tank,” her follow-up, won the award for Best British Film of 2009 from the British Academy, and earned her comparisons to legendary French director Francois Truffaut. It’s no surprise that her newest film, an adaptation of the classic Emily Bronte novel “Wuthering Heights” has been called the most original and daring interpretation of the oft-filmed tale. It’s safe to say that Arnold will have a successful career behind the camera, and may win another Academy Award. She would join a club of other sensational contemporary directors who made their first big splash with acclaimed short films. Here are eight of those directors.
Jason Reitman
Given his genealogy, it’s no surprise that Reitman has turned into one of the most reliable comedic directors in recent memory. Anyone could have spotted his sharp talent back in 2000, with his witty and sardonic short film. It was merely a student film, but it displayed confidence rarely seen in even most experienced filmmakers.
Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant has proven to be one of the more curious, yet genius filmmakers of his generation. It’s no surprise that one of his earliest short films, “The Discipline of D.E.,” represents a vivid experimental work in a career full of them. This black-and-white short based on the story by William S. Burroughs is a drolly comedic oddity.
Christopher Nolan
This British filmmaker is now known for making behemoth, cerebral blockbusters, usually on the elongated side of running time. Yet the film that got him his first modicum of attention was a bizarre three-minute horror called “Doodlebug.” This spectacular short film, about a solitary man attempting to crush a miniature version of himself like a bug, showed off Nolan’s penchant for visual flair at a young age.
John Lasseter
“Toy Story” was considered revolutionary when it premiered in 1995. What many members of the mass audience don’t know is that Pixar’s first film was actually produced a full decade earlier. It was a two-minute short about Anglepoise desk lamps playing a game with a rubber ball. Lasseter’s film sparked the genesis of modern cinema’s most reliable and lucrative film studio.
Jane Campion
One of contemporary cinema’s most daring filmmakers won the esteemed Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her 1993 masterpiece “The Piano.” This was not the first time Campion had won a trophy from the renowned festival. Her 1982 short, “Peel,” about a dysfunctional family on a road trip, shook and thrilled the Cannes jury enough to give her the Palme d’Or for short films.
Martin Scorsese
Is there any filmmaker in the world that has garnered more critical respect over the last 40 years than Marty? The famed fast-talking auteur has made a career of cultivating some of the most violent and vivacious mob thrillers in cinematic history, including “Goodfellas” and “The Departed.” So who would have thought that he got his start making a zany short comedy named “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?”
Tim Burton
Tim Burton is no closet fan of the iconic horror film actor Vincent Price; he even cast the actor in his 1990 masterpiece “Edward Scissorhands”. The director even dedicated one of his first, and most successful, shorts, “Vincent” to him. The stop-motion animated tale is both a quirky, yet loving ode to both the actor and the author Edgar Allen Poe.
Alexander Payne
This American master really isn’t known for his madcap sensibilities. It’s not to say that his films aren’t funny, but the humour mined in his films is rooted in real, humanist situations. His first short, a parody of the ubiquitous opera “Carmen” cleverly titled “Carmen,” is something of the antithesis to his current style, but it’s still fun and very unique.
Zack Mandell is a movie enthusiast and owner of www.movieroomreviews.com and writer of movie reviews for films like The Departed. He writes extensively about the movie industry for sites such as Gossip Center, Yahoo, NowPublic, and Helium.
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