Shorts That Are Not Pants, Toronto’s quarterly short film screening series, returns to the Carlton Cinema with a very interesting selection featuring drunken babies, kung-fu babies, a stranded astronaut, a crooning truck driver in love, an encounter in the belly of a whale, just to name a few!

This latest installment will include short films from Canada, USA, UK Spain, Sweden, and Iceland. In total, there nine films in the series. Here are a few titles to pique your interest…

TYPESETTER BLUES
Dir: Hector Herrera
Canada – 2012
Beastly Bards is a collection of animated shorts featuring loveable monsters. Each short is a distinct piece, written in rhyming verse and inspired by the poetic styles of Edward Lear, Shel Silverstein and Robert Service. The animation features clean lines with a textural mixed-media approach and incorporates a classic mid-century modern esthetic. The shorts are narrated by some of the best voices of the Canadian stage and screen: Gordon Pinsent, Jayne Eastwood, and Kenneth Welsh.

VOICE OVER
Dir: Martin Rosete
Spain – 2012
A certain voice leads us through three extreme situations that are actually the same… Will we survive? From Luis Berdejo, the writer of REC and REC 3: Genesis comes this ten minute epic, which has screened at more than 80 film festivals around the world and picked up more than 30 awards.

DRAGON BABY
Dir: Patrick Boivin
Canada – 2012
In this Kill Bill-inspired short short, the filmmaker’s son Romeo takes on a stuffed dragon with some awesome kung-fu moves.

BELLY
Dir: Julia Pott
UK – 2011
I can feel you in my Belly… Oscar is coming of age, against his better judgment. In doing so he must experience the necessary evil of leaving something behind, but he can still feel it in the pit of his stomach.

THE PIRATE OF LOVE
Dir: Sara Gunnarsdóttir
Iceland – 2012
Daniel C, a truck driver, records an entire CD of ballads for Sherry. Can his music conquer his loneliness?

When asked how this series came together, curator James McNally explained “for the most part the programme seems to come together pretty organically. I saw a few of the films because I write for ShortOfTheWeek.com, while others came through our submission process. Another one was due to a connection with a guy who curates short films in Quebec…That one led to another one with a similar vibe from Sweden… So it’s not particularly scientific, but after I’ve locked the programme, I’m always happy that there seem to be some connections between the films”.

In the case of Shorts That Are Not Pants, I’d say this “organic” process works out perfectly. The great thing about short films is that you do not have to commit to an hour or longer to it. And when executed well, they leave you wanting for more…