Wholphin is a DVD magazine of short films launched in 2005 by Brent Hoff and Dave Eggers, the author and founder of the literary journal McSweeney’s. Shorts from the publication will be screened next week during the Urban Nomad Film Fest …
… but wait. What exactly is a wholphin?
The magazine’s namesake is the extremely rare hybrid of a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. Hoff read about the sea mammal in a science journal while working on the magazine’s first issue and was immediately taken.
“I thought that there are these amazing things out there that nobody has ever heard about before. How many weird hybrids are out there in the ocean that we have no idea about?” says Hoff. “Seeking out these amazing, unseen things was what we were planning to do with the magazine, things that no one has ever looked for before.”
“Television won’t program [the short films] because they aren’t exactly 22 minutes and movie theaters won’t put them anywhere,” he adds. “It seemed like the perfect name that symbolized what we were doing.”
Published quarterly, each issue of Wholphin gathers short films, animation and documentaries from around the world.
The diversity of subject matter is evident on The Best of Wholphin. The compilation DVD includes documentaries about a group of Scottish preteens whose heavy metal band is co-opted by their stage-managing parents; a Yemeni girl who refuses to wear a hijab; and two Native American grandmothers locked in a struggle with the US government and gold mining corporations over control of their land in Nevada, a case which made its way to the UN.
According to an interview with the film’s makers in the DVD’s liner notes, the topic of the last film, American Outrage, had been explored by 60 Minutes, but the news program’s piece never ran because it was deemed too “political.”
Wholphin, however, doesn’t shy away from controversial subject matters. American Outrage will screen at Urban Nomad on Sunday and Please Vote for Me, in which a miniature democracy in a Chinese classroom runs askew, with hilarious and eye opening results, was shown yesterday at the festival’s opening. In an interview with the Taipei Times, Hoff talked about some of these short films, as well as the importance of having an outlet for filmmakers.
Taipei Times: Can you tell me about Please Vote for Me? I haven’t seen it, but I’ve read a little bit about it, and I think that it is something that audiences at Urban Nomad will find interesting.
Brent Hoff: Oh God, it’s such an amazing, hilarious, exciting film. You will love that film. It’s about a democratic election for hall monitor, which, as it turns out, is sort of a big deal, a bigger deal than something like student council president would be here in the United States. Very quickly, within five minutes, the entire class is bawling and there are dirty tricks, backstabbing, underhanded tactics — and these are all young kids. The very process of democracy has brought out the inner politician in these sweet, innocent students. It’s so hilarious and just so incredible that, somehow, the system encourages this kind of behavior — any system of government, for that matter — and it is just really profound because of that, not to mention that it’s also a very captivating film.
TT: I watched American Outrage and was really amazed that there hadn’t been more attention paid to it, especially since the case made it to the UN.
BH: No, and it’s still going on. This is an international issue, that mining companies pay money to get the land they want at the expense of the indigenous population. It’s just a real shock to Americans to see that it’s not just something that happens [in other countries]. While we are all busy trying to free Tibet, less than a hundred miles away there was a similar situation going on.
TT: I read in the liner notes that 60 Minutes had covered the same topic as American Outrage and didn’t show it because it was supposedly “too political.” Why do you think it is so hard for documentaries like that to get out there and be shown?
BH: That’s the million-dollar question. The entire film industry is a very uncertain place and no one wants to take any risks. Anything that seems like a risk at all is going to hurt the chances of a movie getting released. Anything but the safest film or something that has a celebrity in it is the only way to avoid that. It’s really unfortunate that that is the way it is. That’s why I’m really glad that Wholphin exists. It’s definitely not enough, but hopefully there will be much more opportunities for documentary filmmakers.
TT: What opportunities are there right now for makers of short films to find audiences for their work?
BH: There are a ton of opportunities to find an audience and maybe make a very nice profit off of these films, and that’s only going to increase. It doesn’t happen all the time and it doesn’t happen with every film, but the opportunities for that are only increasing as everyone moves more and more into that type of content because of online distribution becoming so important to the [film] business.
TT: I’m sure you have been asked this before, but why have a DVD magazine instead of streaming the films online?
BH: It’s portable, you can take it on a plane. A good portion of the DVD is also the booklet, so it’s more of a package. But I honestly don’t know. People like it, people want to own it, they want to have it on their iPod, too, so they can show this funny compilation of cool films to their friends. But they also want to own our DVD. I don’t know why, but I guess it seems more permanent.
TT: What are the drawbacks of streaming films on a site like YouTube instead of having a DVD on hand?
BH: It’s the quality and also some films are not meant to be seen in a box that size, they need to be seen full screen in a good resolution. We try not to put films that require that online anywhere. We put films from previous issues, things that are out of print, on YouTube. We have a good partner deal with them, so we actually get paid to put it on there. We are not doing it for free, which is good.
TT: What are the advantages of the short film format?
BH: Being concise is something that is always good. I love haiku, it’s my favorite form of poetry. I like being able to say a lot with a little. But I don’t know that it’s a question of an advantage or not. Every story has the right length with which to tell it. Some stories take 110 minutes to tell, some stories take 10 minutes. That doesn’t affect the quality of the story, it’s just what it is supposed to be. Maybe it’s supposed to be 43 minutes, and that is something that, with things like our DVD and with Internet-based distribution, has taken off, the idea that something can be expressed in whatever time the artist feels like it needs to be. It doesn’t have to conform to any television or movie theater parameters of what the proper length is to be programmed.
To subscribe to Wholphin, check store.mcsweeneys.net
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