Short film fest to give big ticket to Hollywood

Mathivanan Rajendran, the Artistic Director of Stray Factory, has been a regular at the Short+ Sweet theatre festivals. “Stray Factory has participated and won awards in many of the theatre festivals organised by them. It was during one such festival that Mark Cleary, the founder of the festival, discussed with me his plan to bring their film festival to Chennai. That’s when he asked us to host the event,” explained Mathivanan. 

The festival which began as a small showcase of 10-minute plays in Sydney, Australia, has grown into a global organisation which has done over 5,000 original theatre, dance, cabaret, and song performances across the world. 

Referring to the entry process, he added, “The entries must be five to 10 minutes, excluding the title, and must be submitted before June 5. We have already received over 100 entries for the festival and we will be shortlisting 30 films from the final entries for the heat organised from June 22 to 24. Out of these, 10 of the best will be screened at the Gala Final at Chennai on June 25. I think this will be a great opportunity for young film aspirants as there are no restrictions in terms of theme or the device with which the movie can be shot. It will bring interesting new content and promote younger film aspirants to come forward.”

The winning film will be screened at the Worldwide Short+Sweet Gala Final to be held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on August 25 along with selected entries from Sydney, Chennai, Melbourne, Mexico City, Manila and Los Angeles.

“The winning team will also be mentored by the team of Stella Adler Academy, an international academy for theatre and acting. Some of the regional directors will also be at the Gala Final in Chennai and we are hoping they will be able to give more insights into the process of developing short films into feature films to the winners of other categories like Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay,” he said. The film festival is expected to expand to New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore next year.