The Soap Factory’s annual 10 Second Film Festival, held behind the St. Anthony Main art gallery, is always a nice way to round out the Fourth of July. MPLS.TV hosted the event, screening the 100 best movies in various categories, such as “Mindless Violence” and “What The Hell Did I Just See?”, and determining a winner for each. Private Dancer performed before the films began as the Red, White and Boom! fireworks display loomed overhead.
What’s more American than short attention spans? The panel of judges, including Barb Abney of the Current and Robyn Robinson (who had some very vocal admirers in the crowd), picked winners based off of the cheers and jeers of the rowdy audience, and host Kevin Albertson handed out awards to the winners, if they happened to be in earshot. Many entries were goofy, random, and bizarre; several were clever and interesting uses of the constrained time period; all were entertaining to watch to some extent. Thin Films produced some real crowd-pleasers, like winning entry “Sticks” and a man eating a carrot very quickly. The whole thing was a bit like surfing Youtube on a larger scale.
The turnout was impressive, comparable to last year’s showing of 3000+ people. Things like this are part of what I really love about the Twin Cities, that so many people would come out to this kind of odd but fun event, on the Fourth of July no less. The 501 Club hosted the After Party, with DJs spinning tunes and remixing the video footage from some of the entries. Below are some of the films: