Here’s a chance to catch all but one of the eight short films nominated for Best Short Film and Best Short Animation at the 2013 Baftas. The winners are the most interesting of a varied bunch. In the animation category, Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson’s ‘The Making of Longbird’ triumphed. At first it looks like a doc about an animator giving life to a drawing, but then the real and animated begin to blur and it turns into a tricksy, fun battle of wills.
In the film strand, the winner was Lynne Ramsay, already famed for features like ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’. Her ‘Swimmer’ was made as part of the Cultural Olympiad and is a beautiful, black-and-white odyssey of a swimmer in a river moving through a surreal and fantastical land and soundscape. Of the others, ‘Tumult’ is a delicious black comedy about a gaggle of Dark Age warriors in the Highlands and ‘Good Night’ is a provocative, sensual drama about two young teen girls sneaking out for a night on the town.