SFF-rated ATHENS

In all editions of SFF-rated 2010, there has been shorts in competition, and shorts in Thematic Groups- and out of competition.

Why?

The conventional wisdom says that the not-in-competition shorts are of lower quality. But here in SFF-rated we don’t like conventional wisdom. Thematic Groups were initially created to host shorts belonging to genres tangent to Sci-fi & Fantasy (like horror for example).

But this year we were faced with a enormous amount of high quality shorts. We wanted to screen them all, and we didn’t know how the competitive process would work if it was spread throughout the 7 days of the festival. So we played the following card: we handed out questionnaires for the Thematic Groups also -asking the exact same question that was asked for the Competition Shorts – “Would you watch this film for a second time”?

Secretly we had decided that if a short screening in a Thematic Group got the highest rating overall, it would be the one to receive the Audience Award for Best Short – after all, it is the Audience’s, not the SFF-rated team Award.

Well, it almost, but didn’t,  happen -although the shorts in the Thematic Groups were also highly appreciated. Out of the 21 that were rated by the Audience, 13 got a “yes” 50% or more in the well known question – “Would you watch this film for a 2nd time?”

First in popularity, and almost stealing the award from “El Nunca Lo haria” was

“The Chronoscope” (Ireland) by Andrew Legge, an excellent pseudo-documentary about a forgotten female scientist (Irish of course) that had invented a machine to look (not travel) back in time. The short was narrated seductively by famous actor Jeremy Irons and created fanatic followers that were lobbying for it!

(…and to think that we got the screening copy of  The Chronoscope just days before the festival begun…)

The full list of the 13 shorts that won the Audience time is (in order)