Gotta Minute Films to make winter commute more bearable

By Thomas Johnson, September 21 2018 —

It’s -30 C. You’re bundled in four layers of prickly-wool and kicking yourself for not bringing a fifth. The wind claws at your face like a territorial street cat. Until the next iron horse stops by, the C-Train station you find yourself waiting at is a veritable polar vortex made only more hellish by that blood-chilling message draping the bottom of the information screen: “Times temporarily unavailable.”

If the worst part of your day, week or remaining time on the third rock from the sun is spent twiddling your thumbs and pondering your existence as you wait for the C-Train, you’re in luck. It’s about to get better, one minute at a time.

Starting Monday, Sept. 24 Gotta Minute Film Festival will air 36 one-minute short films on digital screens on C-Train platforms across the city, as well as at the Calgary International Airport. The shorts vary in genre, ranging from documentary and experimental to live-action and animated, with the curated film selection including local and international filmmakers. A new short will air every five minutes.

Gotta Minute Film Festival has been a mainstay in Edmonton for the past half-decade and is expanding to Calgary as part of its fifth anniversary celebrations. Festival founder Beth Wishart MacKenzie says she’s glad to see the initiative come to Calgary.

“It is so gratifying to see Gotta Minute come into its fifth year. It gives us such a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the work of emerging as well as award-winning filmmakers from Edmonton and around the world and to present their cinematic gems to audiences from every walk of life in public space,” MacKenzie says in a statement. “These little gems bring beauty, or thoughtful reflection, or delightful mischief into ordinary space and time, and if we chance upon them, we are left enriched.”

Shorts will air until Sept. 30.