Short Films by Ana Lily Amirpour

Thursday, June 22, 2017

In advance of the opening of Ana Lily Amirpour’s (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) highly anticipated second feature, The Bad Batch, at IFC Center, join us for a program of her short films including:

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (the short film)
“A girl walks home alone at night and a man follows her with insidious intentions, but when he gets to her apartment, she turns the tables in the most surprising way…with her fangs.  This is a short film I made and birthed the character of ‘The Girl’, an Iranian vampire.  When I made this short film, I wasn’t planning on it being a feature, but then I kept thinking about The Girl, and I loved this character so deeply I wanted to do a whole movie around her.  And so that ended up being the first feature film I made.” (7 min.)

ANA LILY AMIRPOUR LIKES THIS
“An experimental short film I made in 2010 ruminating on social media.  Shot and edited by and starring myself.” (8 min.)

SIX AND A HALF
“A little girl tries to catch a frog in a pond and in the process gets injured. The trauma becomes the seed that drives this revenge story. This film was based on a few childhood memories I had of catching frogs and dissecting them, also getting stitches as a kid… mashed up into one parable about childhood feelings of domination, pain and revenge. The first and only film I shot on film (Super 16mm).” (5 min.)

TRUE LOVE
“A single guy walks into a seemingly normal restaurant filled with couples, but when he realizes the menu is filled with sexual acts, he doesn’t know what to order and things start to get uncomfortable. I made this surrealist anecdote about relationships when I was contemplating my own misery being married, and the inherent awkwardness of the couple system, and finding sexual compatibility. I eventually got divorced. I made this film in my final year of marriage.” (12 min.)

HAIRY (aka “Pashmaloo”)
“Farah and Nilou are opposites – Farah is from the US and Nilou was born and raised in Iran – and when they climb a remote hillside outside Tehran to hang out and listen to music, their differences come to a head when Farah tries to explain why girls shouldn’t be ‘hairy’. After visiting Iran, I was really fascinated by the cultural and societal divides between myself and my Iranian cousins. It seemed amazing to me that if my parents hadn’t left, I would have grown up with extremely different teenage realities.” (17 min.)

A LITTLE SUICIDE
“In a world where people hate you without exception and kill you mercilessly, it’s no wonder this cockroach is suicidal. A cockroach, frustrated with being the target of hate, sets out to kill himself, but on this particular day he finds himself in a world of kindness that throws off his plans.

Made for the Berlin Film Festival (Berlin Today Award in 2012), this short film was made in a summer in Berlin, with a mix of stop-motion animation and live action.” (10 min.)

Photo credit: Myrna Suarez

Ana Lily Amirpour’s first feature, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, will also screen the same evening – Thu Jun 22 at 9pm with Amirpour in person for a Q&A following the film.

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.