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"You Shall Not Authority Me!" - Matthew Silver
Shorts
During the 1998 MicroCineFest Call For Entries, a tape
arrived that caught us off guard. The synopsis sounded dreadful (something
along the lines of, "An examination of the relationship between an elderly
woman and her grown son who lives with her"), so we put off watching it
as long as we could. To our surprise, it turned out to be one of our favorite
entries that year, but it was so different that we weren't sure how it
would go over in front of an audience. That year, Matthew Silver's Mother
& Son took home both the Low Budget Video Award and the Audience Choice
Award for Best Short, permanently etching itself onto our list of all-time
favorite shorts. Jeff Krulik (Heavy Metal Parking Lot) saw it at
our festival and proceeded to bring it to the attention of other film
festivals, some of which had already rejected it, yet gave it another
chance on Jeff's insistence. Todd Rohal saw it, and cast it's co-star,
Matthew's uncle Andy Nadler, for a role in The Guatemalan Handshake.
In the meantime, Matthew brought us more oddball masterpieces: Gods
Of Porcelain And Plumbing (MCF 2001), Beware Of The Hot Dog People
(MCF 2001 Best Choreography Award), and Over Modulated Marriage
(MCF 2003). Obviously we've been anxious to see anything Matthew makes,
so when we found out he had at least another 90 minutes of shorts that
we hadn't seen yet, we jumped at the chance to take a look at them, and
now we're proud to be showing them to an audience. What can you expect?
Matthew's shorts are hard to describe, but if you like the absurdity of
The Kipper Kids, the chaotic onslaught of Shinya Tsukamoto's Testuo:
The Iron Man, the 'wtf?' of John Boorman's Zardoz, and the
low-budget, gritty, awkwardness of The Kuchar Bros., imagine all of those
elements magnified and drawn out for 90 minutes. Are you up for the endurance
test? Have fun... and don't say we didn't warn you.
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Bush Satan Peace - Bogdan Szabo & Matthew Silver, 8:00,
video
A George W. Bush talking action figure haunts the messy,
manic episodes of patriotic, Jesus-worshipping pollsters on a garbage-filled
loading dock.
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Dead To The World And It's Only Tuesday - Matthew Silver,
4:40, 16mm (shown on video)
A happy man skips around town, trying not to be bothered
by anything, despite his run-ins with bad fruit, an unfriendly penguin,
a jogging prankster, bullies, and a doomsayer.
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Dionarap - Matthew Silver & Andre Brongniart, 5:35,
16mm (shown on video)
A paranoid schizophrenic questions God, accosts strangers
in the park, makes a new friend, and encounters a poncho-wearing deity.
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Disco Man - Matthew Silver, 6:30, video
A young boy has a sidewalk encounter with his nemesis,
muscle-bound Billy Bob-a-roony. When things seem bleak, it's Disco Man
to the rescue... or is it? Can disco make a comeback?
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Escape - Matthew Silver, 7:10, video
A captive audience TV-casualty grows tired of imaginary
cat food commercials, and takes matters into his own hands.
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Irritable Bowel Syndrome - Bogdan Szabo & Matthew Silver,
30:00, 16mm/DV
"The world is a diseased brain. The cure might just be
found in the bowels." A Rubicks Cube competition between two men
ends on a sour note. Cut to two other men, in dresses, skipping through
a snow covered meadow with a giant teddy bear. A woman in a bathroom stall
is tormented by a dildo-collecting evil girl who gives birth to a broccoli-defecating
demonic workout coach that rides the first woman around town and fights
off the advances of a naked sailor. Meanwhile, an office worker has a
premonition of a self-fellating birthday boy, and eventually dildo-whips
a Hare Krishna. A couple of elderly men mambo their way out of a puddle
of green slime and then argue over a bubble bath, while a man with relationship
problems pops his friend's giant pimple in a restaurant. You figure it
out.
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Journey Men - Matthew Silver, 9:10, video
Three Journey Men, tied together, decide to go on a journey,
but can't decide which way to go. They attack a motorist and neighborhood
kids with an empty 2-liter soda bottle. Later that day, they try their
hand at panhandling and street performing.
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La Gallina Matadora - Matthew Silver & Manuel Pimentel,
4:10, video
Elvis and a chicken in a graveyard at night.
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Radiation Can Give You Brain Tumors - Matthew Silver,
15:35, video
A storyteller covers his head with tape, and proceeds
to tell the musical story of a happy-jolly guy who enjoys using his home
appliances, until one day when he has "one wacked up dream" warning him
of the dangers of all the invisible radiation he is exposed to on a daily
basis.
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