Sundance is right around the corner, and we’re excited! For the fifth year running we will be covering the festival’s online program, this year sponsored by YouTube again after last year’s stint at Yahoo!. But, with the ever-growing reach, power and legitimacy of online video, once again we’ve noticed that there is a healthy selection of content picked for Sundance that is available to watch right now!
Sundance has been a pioneer in destigmatizing short film’s online, doing away with all their premiere restrictions a few years ago. As a result, they actually look to pad their program out with interesting work from the web. This year the interesting trend is the strong presence of commissioned work. Reindeer originally premiered on the influential fashion film site Nowness. Julia Pott’s latest, The Event, was paid for by UK TV network Channel 4 via their Random Acts program, and both Seraph and Until the Quiet Comes are promos, albeit novel ones, for music albums—highlighting work by Sigur Ros and Flying Lotus respectively.
Enough said, here are 6 Sundance-selected short films that will be playing in Park City at the end of the month, but which are available to watch right now.
2013 Sundance Shorts
Parody
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Corruption
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Found Footage
Catnip is all the rage with today's modern feline, but do we really understand it? Once and for all the facts about this controversial substance are frankly discussed, in the long-lost drug educational film that never-was, "Catnip: Egress to Oblivion?". A Sundance 2013 short film.
Experimental
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The End
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Animation
Animation star Julia Pott is back with a new work based off a poem by Tom Chivers. Tagline—Love and a severed foot at the end of the world. A Sundance 2013 short film.
Documentary
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Identity
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Live-Action
BRIEFLY OFFLINE—Kendrick, an up-and-coming calf roper from Louisiana, shares his dream of reaching the Las Vegas rodeo finals.
Music Video
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Beauty
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Live-Action
A promo for electronic artist Flying Lotus, the impressionistic vision of rising star Khalil Joseph is displayed in this short, dreamlike trip through a Los Angeles project. A Sundance 2013 short film.
Documentary
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Nature
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Live-Action
Journeying 400 kilometers above the polar circle to Karigasniemi village in Utsjoki, Finland, filmmaker Eva Weber captures the reindeer herding that has been the livelihood of the Arctic’s indigenous Sámi people for countless generations. A Sundance 2013 short film.
Music Video
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Identity
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Animation
A music video film, part of Sigur Ros' celebrated "Valtari Mystery Film Experiment", "Seraph" depicts a boy's travails through life as he struggles to understand himself. A Sundance 2013 short film.
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