If you saw the Southern Made Shorts block at the El Dorado Film Festival Saturday, you saw Capchtas cause an existential crisis, a desperate attempt at meditation, and a quest for a little introvert time turning into a beautifully lit battle of wits. All the films took strange and absurdist turns to show modern life almost exactly as it is.

The best example may have been the total charmer “Emma’s Social Battery” by Jannet Lopez and Carlos Jimenez. The film stars a young woman named Emma (Olivia Peck) who falls into a new friend group. She really likes them, but they invite her to too many things and she’s afraid to offend them by saying no.

The characters will seem familiar to introverts everywhere: friends who stay too long, a domestic partner who doesn’t pick up on your telepathic pleas to kick everyone out, that one friend-detective who always has piercing follow-up questions about your excuses.

It builds to a gorgeous game-night showdown in which Emma and a new friend, bathed in red and blue light, face off over her excuse for not attending an upcoming barbecue. Jiminez, whose past work includes the similarly comic and surreal feature After Life Crisis, says the look of the interrogation scene was inspired by the Japanese manga Death Note. But Giallo influences also shine through.

“We wanted to create that kind of balls-to-the wall, f— reality, let’s just go totally subjective and really isolate our characters,” Jiminez said.

Lopez and Jiminez’s crew used a series of complex signals and a lighting package provided by Tim Starr — one of many essential figures in the Shreveport, Louisiana film scene who regularly pitches in to help friends make their films. The crew’s attention to detail protected Lopez from being stressed about the technical issues, she said.

“I was just so blessed to have a wonderful team of creatives,” she said. “I felt like I was pretty blessed to be able to spend the time I did with the actors.”

The film comes from Ghostwright Media, which is quickly building a reputation for films with strong, irresistible hooks — the El Dorado Film Festival also hosted another Ghostwright Media film, Jiminez’s tense meme-stock comedy “Rug Pull,” which follows a man in real time as his meme stock investment takes off.

More Southern Made Shorts at the El Dorado Film Festival

(L-R) Southern Made Shorts filmmakers Carlos Jiminez, Jannet Lopez, Marquel Skinner, Gabriel Rosales, Haley Kirton, Mary McDade Casteel and Rob Senska in a Q&A with El Dorado Film Festival executive director Alexander Jeffery. – Credit: Moviemaker

Marquel Skinner tapped into a relentless modern anxiety with her short “Bot,” which she wrote, produced and starred in. Her sister, Blair Skinner, directed.

Marquel Skinner plays a woman trying to buy concert tickets, who is subjected to an increasingly perplexing and ridiculous series of Captcha tests to prove she isn’t a bot.

“It was born because we were both having a coffee and just chatting about having separate experiences very recently trying to pay something online,” Marquel Skinner said onstage at the South Arkansas Arts Center, homebase of the festival. “I’m like, ‘This has to be a short film, because we can’t be the only ones going through this.’”

“Bot” perfectly captures the frustrating feeling that maybe there’s something wrong with a system that demands you click on all the pictures of bicycles — or maybe there’s just something wrong with you.

For the supernatural “Strand,” screenwriter, executive producer and star Gabriel Rosales tells a story of a man with a curse. He was inspired in part by the very real pain of losing his grandparents in 2019 and 2020. When he lost his grandfather, he couldn’t go to the funeral because of Covid lockdowns.

“So obviously it’s a story about processing grief,” he told the El Dorado audience. The film is directed by Austin Gorski.

At the opposite side of the emotional spectrum is the very funny “Ramón Makes a Movie,” by
Haley Kirton. The film stars the magnetic actor Gio March as a director who refuses to relinquish control of his autobiographical film about his family, to a ridiculous degree. The film features a slew of Shreveport filmmakers in key roles, adding a strong dose of realism to a film about creative narcissism.

“It was written for Gio,” Kirton explained. “He is such a character, and I’ve seen him do comedy, and drama, and I think I’ve just realized I just love watching Gio.”

Without spoiling anything, she gives him a lot to do.

The next film in the block, “(Om)en” will be familiar to anyone seeking a moment of peaceful meditation in a world that seems addicted to distractions. The series of bad omens that comes her way as she tries to unwind feel like a personification of the anxieties we try to keep at bay.

“It started off as a horror comedy, and then it became more of a comedy because I just want to have fun,” said writer-director Mary McDade Casteel, who first brought a film to the El Dorado Film Festival about a decade ago.

McDade Casteel has danced all her life, including on her junior high and high school dance teams in Jonesville, Arkansas, and loves to incorporate dance into her work.

“I edit all my own films, and I feel like just having a rhythm down, all those years, helps me as a filmmaker,” she said.

“Ashes,” meanwhile, tells a story of a lost cat who helps a young boy endure a traumatic home life. Beautifully shot by writer-producer-director Rob Senska, whose main speciality is cinematography, it often relies on abstract images to tell a story that is too universal. The film has no dialogue: Senska says he tends to think first in terms of visuals.

“I have these ideas for visuals and no budget. I’m shooting, editing and do everything, so it’s like, ‘How do I do that around the house? I have my 15-year-old cat, I have some family members — how do I just create something at home?’”

Senska is another crucial contributor to the Shreveport film scene — which often overlaps with the southern Arkansas film scene that is home to the El Dorado Film Festival.

“I wanted to make this accessible to anyone who had a childhood that was sort of like, ‘Oh, I know what it was like to tip toe around my house, or to just like, try to be invisible,’” Senska said. “But then in the end, you come back and kind of reclaim your joy.

You can read more of our El Dorado Film Festival coverage here.

Main image: Gio March in Ramón Makes a Movie,” by Haley Kirton.