CIFF celebrates movies about movies with shorts showcase, including latest from Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Kaufman and Eva H.D. on the red carpet ahead of the North American premiere of their short film How to Shoot a Ghost Saturday night at the Plaza Theatre. The film was screened as part of the Calgary International Film Festival.

The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) hosted a very Charlie Kaufman-esque night of shorts at the Plaza Theatre Saturday night, and it included a brief red-carpet appearance by Kaufman himself, who is one of Hollywood’s more notorious introverts.

Shorts: If We Were a Movie, featured eight short films about movies and the movie-making experience itself, including How to Shoot a Ghost, from Oscar-winner Kaufman, who directed, and screenwriter Eva H.D.

When asked to describe How to Shoot a Ghost, Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, among others, was cryptic.

“It’s 27 minutes long, including end credits,” he said. “It’s about two ghosts walking through Athens for a day. I don’t know. It’s really pretty.”

How to Shoot a Ghost was the second collaboration between Kaufman and poet and writer Eva H.D. The two previously collaborated on 2023’s Jackals and Fireflies.

Kaufman wouldn’t say whether he prefers screenwriting to directing.

“They’re very different things, and they serve different functions for me, so I don’t like one more than the other,” he said.

“When you’re writing, you’re in a room by yourself and you either do it or you don’t, and you can work in a project for years or for weeks or something,” he said. “And when you’re making a movie, there’s a determined period of time, and you either get what you need (shot) or you don’t get what you need. And then it’s over. And it’s a much more -- obviously -- a much more social experience.”

The duo had another appearance Sunday as part of CIFF Industry Week at the Delta Hotel.

Replay

Director, actor and screenwriter Phil Mazo’s short Replay was a comic documentary about a day in 1993, when then-12-year-old Maza appeared on a public access TV show.

“I was supposed to talk about why it’s great for you, how it’s improved my learning abilities and all that stuff. And at some point during the interview, the host asked me a very unexpected, arguably inappropriate question, and it’s a hard-hitting documentary about that moment.”

The film intercuts between original 1993 footage of Mazo and his re-creation of the incident, along with the original host, 30 years later.

Mazo said doing almost everything on a film is all-consuming, but for a low-budget indie filmmaker, has its economic upsides.

“I actually almost always wear almost every hat on everything I do. And it has its challenges, obviously, but I’m also used to it, and I also kind of enjoy it, and there are benefits from it,” he said. “For example, I don’t have to pay myself, so I could spend as much time on it as I want.”

Viva La Revue

In Viva La Revue, director Christian Bunea and producer Maziyar Khatam co-wrote a script that blurs the lines between documentary film and fiction. It’s about Bunea’s desperate efforts to save a beloved art house theatre, the Revue, in Toronto’s Roncasvelles neighourhood, from being shut down.

That brought up the fact that the film about saving an art movie house was being screened at The Plaza, Calgary’s own art movie house that was built in 1912.

“This is a beautiful venue,” Bunea said. “This is our first time here. We just arrived a couple of minutes ago, but we were immediately just taken aback by the the look of the facade and also the location of it.

“It’s stunning,” he said. “We were seriously excited to showcase our film here.”

CIFF continues through Sept. 28. For more about CIFF, go here.