The Secret Matinee in Exile: And then he _steps_on_ the banana

Something you can do in a film that you can’t do in a story is a sight gag. A sight gag is a surprise communicated with a visual. Usually, these are funny, since surprise contributes so much to humor. Many of the films in this year’s Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival had awesome sight gags.

Of course, describing a sight gag is like explaining a joke. Even if you do it really, really well, you lose a lot. But we’ll do what we can -

In Bless You, Godzilla rampages through a city at the behest of the city’s celestial creator. Like most of the fun movies this festival had to offer, most of what makes it fun is visual. The monster is cute bordering on darling as it rampages through the city while the creator looks on. The main sight gag plays off the title - since “bless you” might be about the god-like celestial being, or not.

In Mirage, the main character - an Inuit boy - and his dog wander into a world of wacky things, where water falls up, carrying fish along with it. The boy instantly sees a big time saver for him in his fishing, stringing a net across a hole in the ice and having the water fill his net with fish. This - and a ton of other very funny gags - make this film hilarious without a word of dialog.

Remember 2001: A Space Odyssey? Astronaut goes through perils in space to reach a portal to some other kind of place?  It was a very visual movie. The film showed docking with a space station over classical music - and just let it play out in its own time. Later in the movie, we see the ship in space, floating along. We see the crew, running and eating. Finally, the climax of the movie is visions of the universe beyond what we know.

Spacetime Fabric Softener is the same thing, but more fun. Presented as minimalist animation of a suited figure on his football-shaped rocket, our astronaut navigates through dangers to reach a portal to other realities. We watch the considerably more zany visions pass in front of the astronaut on his way beyond the infinite.

Werewolf!

There wolf. There castle. There hotel.

See what I did there? My word gag plays on your knowledge of the genre of monster movies. Honeymoon Suite does just the same, as a man checks into a luxury hotel during the full moon. Between the reactions of the hotel staff and the other guests, the film offers us a bunch of gags and - once we’ve had some fun - brings the story home with a more soulful moment. The werewolf hasn’t always been this way, and he is, still, fundamentally a good person.

Some of the movies that I’ve talked about have been little more than the gag itself. Maybe you can tell from my tone that I enjoyed these movies. Sight gags are well suited for short films, when you have space, but not time, to tell a story.

The Magic Salmon was one gag after another and they did not wear thin, although they might have in a longer film. The story was in the form of a chapter of an old-timey serial. Fun, but if not for this exile, I would be watching an actual episode of an old-timey serial.