The Montreal 60 Second Film Festival is a film fest that has nothing to do with self-centered and hard to approach filmmakers.
“To me, M60 is a bunch of guys and gals from Mile End who like throwing a party. This one just happens to require a lot of planning,” said Daniel Kay, a Concordia film studies student whose film Tamponandon was well received at this year’s M60.
The third edition of Montreal 60 second Film Festival took place Oct. 7 to 9 with screenings at both Cinema du Parc and Sala Rossa. M60 stands out from other film festivals, in part due to the length of the movies it shows; it is indeed Montreal’s shortest film festival.
“It came like a lightning bolt on the night of a lunar eclipse. We talked about making a film, or perhaps making a very short film, or perhaps each of us making a different short film … and before we knew it, M60 was born” said organizer Sean Michaels.
This year’s M60 presented 80 minute-long films revolving around the theme of “adventure.” While the risk exists that people might end up creating similar projects with hundreds of brains working on 80 separate “adventures,” the results are surprisingly different.
Whether it was the tone or the production techniques, no movie looked nor felt the same. Some films were hilarious, others spine-chilling, while most of them were touching in their own particular way. There were movies that seemed very well scripted, others seemed improvised. It could go from a stop-motion animation, to a one-shot movie about the prairies. According to Michaels, this is M60’s best year in term of the quantity and, most importantly, the quality of the films presented.
One minute might seem too short to tell a story properly or to convey a certain message. Still, this limitation did not affect any of the films presented at M60. It gave plenty of time to set a tone and the audience also had the chance to get attached to characters they had been introduced to 15 seconds earlier.
“There is something very challenging about having one minute to convey a complete action” says Rhea Nelken, a student in theatre and development at Concordia, whose film was titled On our Way to Iceland.
Filmmakers had one month to produce their movies after the registration party in late July. They had to be able to organize their ideas to meet the deadline, and needed to be concise in order to create a complete and interesting piece, because “a badly made minute can seem like forever” according to Nelken.
Participants were thrilled to be part of the M60 festival, simply because it is a great opportunity to experiment with filmmaking. Since it is not a contest and there is no jury, people dare to produce movies out of the ordinary, while having fun with the creative process. There is no pressure, and it shows in the end that the filmmakers genuinely enjoyed working on their movies.