One thing is plainly evident from the eight short films comprising the competition for 2010 Utah Short Film of the Year at this year’s Fear No Film portion of the Utah Arts Festival. These young filmmakers have demonstrated Utah’s capacity as a leader in independent filmmaking. The judging will, indeed, be quite difficult.

Audience members will have three opportunities to see these very good films: Thursday, June 24; Friday, June 25, and Saturday, June 26, at 8 p.m. in the City Library Auditorium.

Smog Lake City: Main Street by Alex Haworth

In January, the expected winter inversion seemed to be particularly bad just especially as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had designated northern Utah as having the nation’s worst air. Haworth, 25, (a talented filmmaker who already has started coming into his own) decided without any planning or budget, to, as he described in his blog, “to strike out into the inversion and shoot some video around my office on Main St. The carcinogenic soup that fills up Salt Lake City may be shortening our lives, but it sure makes it beautiful. The video was an excuse to use [a] Rebel T1i at night (I was interested to see how the high ISO exposure would look in HD). I was amazed at how the camera performed with a quick prime lens in the available light downtown.”

The film, less than four minutes, emerges as strangely captivating considering the originating stimulus. As Haworth noted: “The whole experience was far more enjoyable than I could have anticipated. Forcing yourself to focus on a small portion of the city gives you an almost palpable taste of the urban environment (especially when the air itself is palpably tasty!). I enjoyed being a passive observer, shrugging off the odd looks and belligerent stares with a feeling that I was in search of something important. I don’t know if I found it, but I did find details I had previously overlooked, and I had a great time.”

Darned Little Devil by Aaron Bristow and Aaron Mann

Watch out, Brigham Young University. Utah Valley University’s animation program is fast coming into its own bailiwick of respect and honor as evidenced in this Looney Tunes-style animation piece.

The Antagonist by Daniel Pimentel, May Bartlett, and Kevin Lestarge

This film was a hit at last fall’s Pitch-Nic premieres of Salt Lake City’s SpyHop Productions, one of the nation’s strongest youth media organizations. The project started with the challenge of situating Pimentel’s long-cherished doodle of a curious-looking character with a top hat in a workable story. The process of reverse engineering an effective fictional narrative required many pain-staking revisions that long ago dashed any familiar connections to Pimentel’s original intentions. The result was a smartly entertaining short film of postmodern fantasy – an irreverent, ironic, and relevant critique of those who think that fantasy and imagination alone can compensate for their dull lives. To say more in advance would do a disservice to this fantastic little piece.

X-ing by Carson McKay

BYU’s Center for Animation continues to impress, having won 10 Student Emmys in the last seven years. The most recent winner is this farce about an ill-fated pair of lovesick armadillos at a truck stop. McKay is now at DreamWorks. No more needs to be said.

The Life and Death of My Fellow Kinsman Burt by Matthew Pool and Stephen Simmons

Salt Lake Film Society sponsors a slam-style film competition where the directors must select three items from a list that must be in the film. These daring filmmakers decided to throw in the entire list and have won several awards for their work.

The Single Mother by Ryan Logan

This 2009 6-minute gem by former Salt Lake City resident Ryan Logan has been making the rounds and has earned numerous accolades. It took the first place Alternative Spirit Award when it debuted last year at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and has been catching the attention of viewers and critics at many festivals in and outside of the United States. This film also appeared most recently at the local Damn! These Heels Pride Film Festival sponsored jointly by the SLC Film Center and Salt Lake Film Society. Logan’s reconceptualization of the iconic June Cleaver character is best explained through an excerpt from his artistic statement:

“There’s no such thing as ‘alternative’ families or aspirations. It’s all the same. I wanted to create a character that was the direct opposite to the ‘traditional’ folks I grew up with, yet they could identify with and root for. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning writing The Single Mother and asked Jason to assume the title role. Together we would explore the pitfalls of someone with the same impossible dream… especially in Utah.”

2gether by Austin James Green

Green made this film for a University of Utah film studies project. The story focuses around a homeless man so desperate for survival that he even resorts to dishonest and selfish means to manage. However, he realizes his epiphany when a young girl, who is with her mother at a car wash, gives him a crushed fortune cookie with the message “to give is to receive.” The simple gesture transforms the man who sets out to give everything he has.

Mashed by Anthony Holden

Once again, BYU’s animation program sends up a winner. A five-minute short about a mashed potato machine maker, this film earned a Student Emmy for Richard Williams, a music student, who wrote the ragtag piano and Dixieland jazz score.