7 Minutes of Ur Life (2009)

Director: Magda M Olchawska

My favourite No Festival Required screening of the year is always the selection of short films shown at the Phoenix Art Museum. Here's Selection 2010.

A woman looks into the mirror and slips on the ring that's hanging on a chain around her neck. She looks out the window. She rejects someone, at least initially. She puts down a picture, at which point we realise that there are sounds in this apartment other than those that filter in from outside. She sits on furniture. Nobody speaks, even when these two unnamed characters come together physically on the table, or afterwards as they sit in silence. She drops the ring on the floor. He looks at her. And she's gone.

This is the epitome of the arthouse short, making it surprising to find it shot in colour. It's the sort of wordless but utterly understandable story that tends to get lampooned in shows like Family Guy whenever it's revealed that someone made a short film in college. This one, produced and directed by Magda M Olchawska of Bulletfilm, is cleverly done, deceptively simple and careful in its pauses and silences. Most of the soundtrack is deliberately banal, cars and outdoor noises reminding us that there's a world outside the apartment, however much the two people we watch apparently resist that, at least for 7 minutes of their lives.