The Manhattan Short Film Festival / When Nicholas Mason moved from Australia to New York City as an aspiring actor and filmmaker in the mid-1990s, he came to the inevitable realization–as so many young film students do–that making a movie audiences would actually see was a near-impossibility without studio backing. Mason wasn’t just discouraged, he was angry. So he set out to create a film festival that would unite filmmakers and audiences; a festival that wouldn’t rely on meddling, money-minded studios–and one that would go so far as to outright exclude them.

“I wanted to make a statement,” laughed Mason. “So I went home and I sat down and it became kind of like a Jerry Maguire moment. One of the things that gets so expensive is the cost of film itself. So I wrote a long, long letter to Kodak and all the rest of the film companies and I drew diagrams on it and I wrote notes and I drank a bottle of red wine and sent off this letter at four in the morning and that was it. I forgot all about it. About three weeks later, the phone went off and I picked it up and it was Fuji and they said, ‘We want to give you the film.’”

That moment was the start of what would become the Manhattan Short Film Festival, a globally-screened festival of short (18 minutes or shorter) films from all over the world. This year’s offerings, which will be screened at the Honolulu Academy of Arts’ Doris Duke Theatre, come from Mozambique, France, Spain, Australia, the United States and more. And the films’ cover thematic ground that’s as diverse as their countries of origin–with stories about family dynamics, self-image, government control and more (though it’s notable that the prevailing quality is one of whimsy and human resilience).

The festival has come a long way from its debut.

“I had no money and we just went ahead and put this festival on,” said Mason. “I had to erect a screen on the side of a truck and they broke the screen. It was horrific. The whole thing. It was just a terrible, terrible time but the thing happened.”

After that, Manhattan Short moved into a more central location in Union Square. It attracted big names like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, who served as celebrity judges. And it keeps growing. Now in its 12th year, the Manhattan Short Film Festival is screening 10 finalists’ films (pre-selected from more than 400 entries) in 173 cities on five continents–all in the span of one week.

“It has nothing to do with me,” said Mason. “I haven’t had an idea in my life. The growth of this thing is just about the people who responded to it. A woman here or there saying, ‘Oh, what a wonderful idea,’ and she just happens to be part of this cinema union. Completely six-degrees-of-separation stuff.”

And while Mason insists that the festival’s growth has been purely organic, he has never allowed it to stray from his original vision–which was to create a forum by which to promote films by and for the people. Today, audience members–all of whom receive a ballot card upon entering the theater–are asked to pick their favorite of the 10 films. Each theater tallies the results and the winner will be announced in New York on Sept. 29. Already, Mason is looking to next year’s festival, brainstorming ways to bring it to more audiences–including screenings in Africa for the first time. And the more widespread the festival becomes, the more it grows into each community’s vision for it.

“Honestly, if you saw the photos, in Russia, they put us to shame,” said Mason. “They paint the buildings to say, ‘one world, one festival.’ It’s a party. It’s not so much about, ‘let’s see a film and discover filmmakers,’ and all that shit. It’s much beyond that. It’s basically let’s get out there and say hi to everyone. It just became one of those things that grew differently in each place. In New Milford, Connecticut, the mayor now throws a party for the public on this day, or in San Antonio it’s a day for the people who are deaf and they have people come out doing sign language with all of these films. They’ve all just run with it in any way they want. It’s now a much bigger thing.”

A mini-documentary covering the 3-day short film festival

The Manhattan Short Film Festival 2007 - Lines

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