Basel, Switzerland in the 70s, Silvio Caduff, artist and owner of the Erste Mini-Galerie had a little advertising trick to lure passersby into his gallery space: he would remove the menus inside menu boxes outside of restaurants and replace them with paintings—so that people walking by could "watch" the paintings that were in the gallery. The curious invention no doubt formed a deep impression on his young nephew, Giacun. As we fast forward nearly thirty years later, Giacun Caduff, now an indie-filmmaker living in Los Angeles, has come up with a similar device to help promote a different sort of medium—short film.
"box[ur]shorts™ is a film festival we started up in 2005. Basically we take films and put them in a box—a movie jukebox—and then we place these movie jukeboxes in places where people have five, ten minutes—where they're like waiting for a table or in a coffee shop or at laundromat—basically they can tune into a movie." The motivation was to give the short film a new platform, because the shelf-life of short film, is well, short. It might make it to a film festival, it might make it to a few film festivals, but eventually it gathers dust on a shelf. "This way," says Caduff "the short film actually comes to the audience and they can watch it. Or download it as a podcast." The name of course stems from the fact that Caduff and his cohorts "box your shorts".
Watch "box[ur]shorts™ Film Festival Instructions".
The device itself is a hybrid jukebox with multimedia functions. Caduff and ally Ryan Reichenfeld banged out prototypes in Reichenfeld's garage. They took apart dvd players and rewired them to the the navigation panels they created on the boxes.
For your waiting pleasure: a customer enjoys the box at DT-UT in New York
Admiring the box installed in the bar, Hiroshima, Japan
Short film bait: installed outside Cargo Bar, Basel Switzerland
This Utopian vision of a movie screenings at every diner and laundromat while you wait is already in the works. A number of boxes exist are out there: "We have six —right now we're moving a couple of boxes around—trying to find better venues that have more traffic. I think our best location is definitely the one in Culver City, Los Angeles—which is in a laundromat. It works you know, because people spend half an hour doing their laundry or an hour and they click and see the film..." Caduff aims for more coffee shops in West LA and another location in New York—a hair salon. Since box[ur]shorts™ is also an international film festival, there is one installed in a bar in Hiroshima, Japan and the Cargo Bar in Basel, Switzerland, on the banks of the Rhine.
The Godfather: Silvio Caduff with a box of his own
All this is done on a no-budget budget. It's free for people to watch and enjoy and it's free to submit—in the spirit of true indie-filmmaking, box[ur]shorts™ has come this far with the goodwill and vision of volunteers and the similarly minded. Next January the second box[ur]shorts™ Awards Night will take place. All the selections from 2007 will be voted on by the judges and the audience, "We have prizes now—there are five awards: The Golden Boxer Shorts (and you actually do get boxer shorts)and there's Silver Boxer Shorts and Bronze.And then we have the Audience Award and the best Student Film Award." The winners get $5000 worth of film production related software like Avid Editing Suites and Showbiz scheduling software.
Giacun Caduff and Ryan Reichenfeld with the winner of 2006's Golden Boxers
Only fifty to eighty films a year make their way to box[ur]shorts™. The shorts are filtered for engaging content. "I don't want the backyard home video of someone getting a cake smashed into their face. " Sites like Youtube bother Caduff—not because of the competition they present—"I think there's a trade-off between quantity and quality—everyone can upload everything, which in a sense is a democratic concept, but if I personally am looking for films online to put in my festival, I'm not using YouTube." For those curious to see the quality filtered selections of box[ur]shorts™ , you can log onto www.boxurshorts.com . Or ask for box[ur]shorts™ at a coffee shop, a diner, a laundromat or a nail salon near you.
