Must Be Painful

Seeking fulfillment, a young drifter forgoes isolation to embark on a year-long murder spree.

A troubadour is expelled from the city when the queen sees his disfigured face. The palace guards smash his instrument as punishment, but the musician does not lose his determination to continue making music.

After seeing a suggestive fossil of two dinosaurs "getting it on," an anxious father tells his curious son a series of little white lies to avoid having "The Talk."

Hollywood beckons for recent film school grad Nick Chapman, who is out to capitalize on the momentum from his national award-winning student film. Studio executive Allen Habel seduces Nick with a dream deal to make his first feature, but once production gets rolling, corporate reality begins to intervene: Nick is unable to control a series of compromises to his high-minded vision, and it's all he can do to maintain his integrity in the midst of filmmaking chaos.

This ode to standup comedy and overall antisocial, student film, headlined the 2002 film program at Long Beach.

The aged farmer Gunnar and his visiting granddaughter Anna struggle with communication as their dog faces a terminal illness. Over a summer weekend, secrets unfold and the family must duel mortality.

A social worker recounts the case of Ella Jackson, a girl who sees a man standing behind her in the mirror

The man needs the trip. The job impedes him to do so. Then the man stuck to his chair! Loosely based on a short short story named "A Man Called Desk" from the book "Password Incorrect" written by Nick Name

A student movie loosely based on the short story by Sadegh Chubak

Supermarket Sweep

Darren Aronofsky’s AFI short opens with angry slacker Dave sitting in a dreary, empty junkyard. Dave stares into space, sips beer, and beats the hell out of a cracked guitar. We quickly realize the emptiness of the dump parallels the emptiness of Dave’s life which consists of smoking weed, staring at television screens and watching school children. Dave’s friend Pete is shortly introduced, along with their friend, Ari, who despite calling her pals losers, doesn’t seem to accomplishing much herself. These three are going nowhere fast. They’re the amoebas of life… protozoa….

A man without his own half of the body is looking for the other half in the opposite sex. As for the integrity of his body, so for the sake of emotional healing.

During biology class, the young Pedro accidentally traps his middle finger in a hole in his desk. The case takes on unexpected proportions.

In order to prevent further self harming, a young woman is forced to live in a new synthetic body, and must navigate intimacy in a physical form she fundamentally feels disconnected from.

LETTERS, a dramatic historical fiction written by Mrs. Evelyn Merritt in 2010, tells the story of U.S. soldiers and their loved ones through their correspondence beginning with the Civil War and ending with the War in Iraq. Sahuarita High School students adapted the Readers’ Theatre play into a movie, reasoning the student actors would be kept safe from Covid-19 by filming them individually, and afterward the footage could be reassembled into a screenplay following the original dialogue.

This meta student film illustrates the trials and tribulations of being a film student.

Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. —Allyson Nadia Field

A masseuse's journey to find the human touch.

A sensationalist television show unravels the sordid story of Luciano Fernández and analyzes the possible motives that led him to murder a child. (Inspired by a real event that occurred in the forest of Verrières, Paris, on May 27th, 1964.)

A young couple's last hours together before a trip that will separate them.