Keiko ibi	Michael Goetz	Greg Pak	Mark Osborne	Roy Unger
Jim Fleigner	Jochen Schliessler	Charlie Call	Erisabeth Lohen	Grant Barbeito
Keith Milton	Christine Swanson	Mitchel Rose	Chris Harwood	Bruce Laffey
Michael Cargile	Joan Raspo

For twelve years, Mitchell worked as a performer and director in a dance company. Originally, he made the short "Elevator World" as slides to entertain theater audiences during intermissions at the company's performances. He said that he's had quite enough of working as the dancing director. "Performing art ends on stage, but film can speak to a much larger audience," he explains. "And once you make a film, it exists in a concrete form." Mitchell attributes the success of "Elevator World" to the fact that he applied animation to express people's unconscious behavior in the elevator--behavior that everyone can relate to. "I didn't use actors in this short because they would automatically impose their personality. I wanted the characters to be homogeneous," explains Rose. Since completing "Elevator World," Mitchell has already finished two live-action shorts including a documentary about a musician and a drama about dance.

"A Domestic Incident" is about a dispute between a couple behind closed doors. Chris says that he wanted to express negative feelings like jealousy, confusion, fear and anger in a large-scale drama, even though it takes place in such a limited space. The film is about 18 minutes long. We asked Chris how he decided how long "A Domestic Incident" should be to tell his story. "It is generally known that one page of script takes one minute of a film," explains Chris. "The length of a film without dialogue can be decided pretty much any way the director wants. This particular script had 21 pages, so we simply thought that the length of the film was going to be more or less 20 minutes." When asked about the difficulties of making this film, Chris told about two fights that actually broke out on the set. "First of all, the lead actors had a fight about something petty. I thought they were really going to kill each other! Then the AD and the DP had a serious dispute over certain issues. As the director, I told the actors to continue the fight because the film is about a feud. As for my AD and DP, I listened to what they had to say, and they were OK after that." Chris' next film is an action-comedy short which he'll shoot in northeastern Canada.

After earning a marketing degree, Bruce studied acting. As a producer for "A Domestic Incident," he spent one week actually shooting, but 9 months preparing. "From the screenplay to finding actors, staff, location hunting, etc., it took a lot of time. We didn't have any investors for this film, so we had to produce it with what we had. We used private sources and connections to get resources like equipment and costumes for free," says Bruce. Bruce screens his short films actively on the net. He is actually producing a short specifically for the Web. "I am not at all satisfied with the quality of streaming right now, but there is a great future in it. Those films shown on the net will find their way to TV or cable." When asked about his future projects, Bruce replies, "I want to direct!" He also adds, "I am talking with Chris about collaborating on another project, and I want to produce two films which I've just finished writing the scripts for."

American Short Shorts is so far the best film festival that I've ever experienced. I've participated in about 20 film festivals, but this is one that really supports the short filmmakers. I hope that the festival will continue for a long time to come.

Joan's animated short "Avenue Amy" is a comical piece in which images of live characters are mixed with animation by using the chroma-key process. The Andy Warhol-touch of her drawing really originates in Joan's art school days when she was learning Warhol's technique. "It took me two days to shoot the live action characters but it took me 4 weeks to process it to animation," says Joan. "I am not a professional animator, but I've always loved animation, especially the Japanimation for its meticulousness. I've done some commercials, and the art school offered me the opportunity to produce this project." The protagonist of the story, Amy, is actually Joan's friend, and Amy plays herself in the film. Amy is a writer, and this short is a dramatization of a column she had written in a New York paper. It is a true story, and Amy has already written another 5 episodes. We asked Joan about her future projects. "I want to make a silent comedy that takes place in the East Village of Manhattan. It's a place for young people, just like in Shibuya or Harajuku, but it used to be a Jewish immigrants' quarter. It would be interesting to show how things have changed." For further information on "Avenue Amy," please check out the following web site. http://schedule.oxygen.com/story.jsp?thread=458

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