University of Miami Interactive Storytelling class uncovers the decline of South Florida’s fishing stock through a multimedia website

Short films are often reduced to beginners’ first exercises or to quick and superficial amusements, and shortness is usually seen as a handicap and not an opportunity. “The Art of Reduction” looks at short films from the opposite angle and asks what they are capable of not despite of but because of the limitation in time. A close analysis of four examples shows a number of narrative patterns and effects working especially well in the short format. Among them are the establishment of paradox situations, a fragmentary slice-of-life-structure, the sudden shift from literal to allegorical meaning, the play with narrative conventions, a laconic or allusive style and the open or ambiguous ending.

Coral Gables, FL (May 27, 2008) – The 2008 winners of the ‘Canes Film Festival screened their films at the Paramount Theater on May 22.  The third annual event, held in collaboration with the University of Miami Alumni Association, featured seven graduate and undergraduate short films.

So captivating are Alfred Hitchcock’s narratives, much scholarship has neglected to study him at the microstructural level. A close examination of Notorious, however, shows how the construction and contexting of a single shot produces an intensive and powerful turning of the story as a whole. Attention is paid here not only to editing, camera position, and framing, but also to the smallest expressive gesture made by a performer: in Hitchcock, smallness is often central to the unfolding of the tale.

This paper executes an in-depth analysis of the exhibited works of filmmaker Tacita Dean. This analysis is informed by a discussion with the artist herself that occurred on January 20th, 2007 at her Miami Art Central exhibition in Miami, Florida. The discussed works include A Bag of Air (1995), Disappearance at Sea (1996), Bubble House (1999), Sound Mirrors (1999), Teignmouth Electron (2000), The Green Ray (2001), Fernsehturm (Backwards into the Future) (2001), Pie (2003), Palast (2004), and Kodak (2006). The author argues Dean’s installations are striking in their sense of loneliness; a haunting loneliness that is nostalgic while remaining unfixed in time.