Future Reloaded, New Solondz Short Film

This year the Venice International Film Festival commissioned 70 filmmakers who've had success at the fest to create original short films, between one and three minutes long. There are some compelling names on that list, including Catherine Breillat, Bernardo Bertolucci, Atom Egoyan, Isabel Coixet, Claire Denis and yes, Todd Solondz. The festival describes the series of films, collectively titled Future Reloaded, as, "both a collective tribute to the Festival (the world’s first film festival to celebrate its 70th edition) and a reflection on the future of cinema." The films have already been completed and at least most of them seem to be available onlime.

Solondz has both written and directed his film, which is produced by Laura Terruso and executive produced by Solondz regular Mike S. Ryan. It's a strange little film (which doesn't seem to have its own, individual title) reading excerpts from course catalog of a Chinese film school existing a thousand years in the future. Here, see it for yourself:

Interestingly, the IMDB has an entry for a two hour documentary called Venice 70: Future Reloaded, which lists all 70 of the filmmakers as co-directors. I don't know if this is an upcoming documentary about the short films, or very possibly just a lazy way to list all 70 short films as one easy entry to the database. I'm hoping it means that the festival intends to package all 70 films as a single DVD; but we'll see. At any rate, we've got an unexpected new short film by Solondz on our hands - enjoy!