Lone Star International Film Festival 2008

Set on the coast of a prehistoric New Orleans and narrated from the bottom of the ocean by a dead little girl, the film tells the tale of a group of shell-shocked residents who rediscover a sense of hope after a man thought lost to the storm washes ashore. He immediately starts building a raft, to return to the sea and find his waterlogged love. For reasons as elemental as they are inexplicable, the townspeople decide to join him in this effort, and together they turn his driftwood dinghy into a grand patchwork vessel, hewn together out of old memories and keepsakes: a rusty automobile, a janky upright piano. A bathtub and a bed. Hints at former lives laid to waste by the hand of God. A new community forms there on the beach. Everyone brings something, everyone does their part, including the local preacher, who joins the crew after his church is accidentally torched during a rather Dionysian Mardi Gras parade. Presented with a special award just for this film, the Wholphin award for Best Short, SXSW stated that it was going to a film that demonstrated everything a short film can be. The key word is can; a short film doesn’t have to go this far to be great, nor should it. But it is possible, and Zeitlin and his cast and crew did it, and I’ll be darned if I’ve ever seen a film of any length with the same scope as this one. It may be less than half an hour, but it’s just as much a feature as anything else at the festival. - David Lowery