Jumping from the feature-length bridge

For most people in the world of cinema, film still means feature-length narrative film , while so-called shorts fill another, neglected, undervalued category. However, there appear to be more short films around than ever before - more opportunities to make and also to show them, thanks particularly to digital technology. This article takes the usual reductive characterizations of short audio-visual work - as being, variously, a training ground for future professionals , a free space where young people can indulge in anarchy for a little while before growing up, or as a calling card for the film industry - and interrogates them in the context of a rapidly changing and evolving media culture.