WXXI continues to put a spotlight on the work of Rochester Institute of Technology film and animation students by presenting a series of shorts biannually.
RIT Shorts airs Thursday, August 28 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV and the WXXI-TV Live Stream. Repeats Friday, August 29 at 10:30 p.m. and Sunday, August 31 at 3:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV
RIT Shorts is a bi-annual series that showcases the work of some of RIT’s most impressive student filmmakers, offering these young producers a platform to share their films to a broader audience while offering WXXI viewers the chance to see the incredible talent that RIT is cultivating.
Featured shorts include:
A Fish and a Bird by Deanna Moorehead
A fish and a bird may fall in love but where would they make their home?” is a proverb that long predates this film. It poses the question: can two creatures built to thrive in different conditions maintain a relationship? Abstracted further: is love enough? “A Fish & A Bird” offers an answer to this question, by way of depicting the tragic romance of the titular animals as an all-out operetta. They serenade each other through the obfuscating surface of the water, and in the mysteriousness of the other each finds something with which to be enamored. When the boundary of land and sea strains the relationship, the fish is moved to change herself to better-suit her paramour. When she breaks the surface and they see each other plainly for the first time, their relationship is irrevocably altered.
Encyclopedia Galactica by Kenneth Reynolds
In ancient days, humans would look at the stars and dream of an endless future; every point of light emblematic of a new horizon to cross, a new frontier to conquer, a destiny to claim. But this future would not come to pass. Instead, the future would see the human race gone, our pan-galactic society torn apart by the strains of expansion. The planets settled during humanity’s diaspora lay abandoned, with all traces of our presence eroding into ruin and dust; an ancient cosmic ecosystem swallowing our collective remains. And despite our absence, those hopeful, naive dreams of that now-ancient era still echo across the galaxy, for any who choose to intercept them. Encyclopedia Galactica is a mixed-media film about these forgotten worlds, and a glimpse into the galaxy that humanity has left behind.”
I Had To by Vinh Nguyen
An exploration of the generational gap of the diaspora of the Vietnam war and its ripple effect on my life.