Archive

Fantastic Short Films

Ruben

Grant BARBEITO

USA1998 6min color

Synopsis

Everyone might have thought of suicide in childhood at least. It could be accepted as a procedure that a child must comply with to realize the hardness of life. And people might think of suicide again after they grew up. The constant desire for death is the desire for escape from reality that one has to face. It is self-projection about the instinct of murder latent beneath the human nature. Most people who live to fit themselves to the principle of reality, look away from the desire with effort, or forget it. However, what if there is a man who decides to murder himself quite long after he's grown up and put his decision into execution? He must have an appropriate reason for that. Ruben is a story about a man who decides to commit suicide. He brings a chair and ties the rope on the ceiling. The remaining process is just to hang himself and put his feet away from the chair... The record misrevolves on a turn table, a roach leisurely passes him by, and a black cat gazes at him as if it were laughing at his divine rite of death. (PARK Ji-Yeon)

Diretor

Grant BARBEITO

Grant has written, produced and/or directed more than 20 films, including White, a short that premiered at the New Orleans Film Festival. He studied film at the University of Colorado and the School of Visual Arts in New York, has been awarded filmmaking grants from Panavision, AGFA and the Visual Arts Foundation. Grant's films Trilogy, and Nights were co-written with Jeff Gross.