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Shorts include Columbus-native actors, filmmakers
The Columbus Film Council will present a collection of short films with a Valentine’s Day theme—love, sex and romance on Tuesday, Feb. 11. Join fellow cinephiles at Brothers Drake Meadery & Bar, 26 E. 5th Ave. in the Short North, to view the collection. The show is free and open to the public. Screenings begin at 8 p.m. Films to be screened include Love Stalk, A House, A Home, Grotto, and Sphere In Boxland. “We are thrilled to be able to present international short films as part of a community screening program with Brothers Drake Meadery,” said Susan Halpern, Columbus Film Council Executive Director. “The evening will be a dark and humorous look at love, yet with hope and romance as well.” Love Stalk (by Joe Fiorello, 20 minutes) takes place in Hong Kong and, hrough a young woman’s eyes, explores the world’s new digital capability of stalking via the Web. Sharon Ong (played by Angie Palmer, a former Columbus resident) is an executive from Singapore having a hard time finding love in the one-night-stand capital of the world. Her fortune seems to have changed when she briefly meets Ryan Tan (Jae Leung) and finds that he “checks in” online to one of her favorite spots. As Sharon starts following him through his check-ins, she soon realizes the dangers of stalking her secret crush. In Grotto (by Dave Scala, seven minutes), follow a young man’s return to his rural home from his new urban life at college in Manhattan. When Marco returns to his home in the country for the summer, he reunites with his best friends at a midnight pool party with the intention to tell them some hefty news. An unexpected guest to the party coupled with an approaching storm, compromise everything Marco anticipated the night to be. A House, A Home (by Daniel Fickle, seven minutes), confronts a love, a death and another death as they are reconciled in a subterranean world. Unrealized love is a theme repeatedly approached throughout time and around the world by way of story, song, art and theater. Love of all types fights, and sometimes surpasses, the barriers life seems to consistently throw up against it. Whoever said love was easy? With this film, take in the lives of two mentally-ill patients of the same doctor. See why their love went unrealized until their days of passing. At least they were together in the end, for eternity. As the last line of the film’s first song states, “You die knowing he’ll bury you next to your love in the ground…” Sphere In Boxland is Columbus filmmaker Benjamin Neidenthal’s animated film (eight minutes) for anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong. In a place called Boxland, a lone sphere struggles with being different from everyone around him. Lonely, sad and the target of constant harassment, he sets out one day after losing his job in search of a place where he fits in. Screening made possible through the Columbus Film Council with support from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. For more information, go to ColumbusFilmCouncil.org.