Future Shorts Film Festival

The sister company of Future Cinema, Future Shorts is billed as the largest short film network in the world. Breaking boundaries, borders, and conventions since 2003, Future Shorts is a strong believer in film’s unique power to build community and communicate on a global level. In addition to its integral role in the production and distribution of an extensive catalog of material, FS seeks out “explorers, adventures, dreamers” to help create a worldwide exchange of stories via its Future Shorts Festival. With a motto of “building community through outdoor movie events,” Slab Cinema is a natural fit to add San Antonio to the list of 144 cities around the world hosting screenings of “the world’s biggest pop-up film festival.” At dusk on Tuesday, Slab lands at Alamo Street Eat Bar to screen seven shorts hand-picked for the 2012 summer season: A Morning Stroll (Grant Orchard’s animated BAFTA and Sundance winner stars a chubby chicken and somehow crams a century into seven minutes); Guest (daughter knows best in this mini coming-of-age drama exported by the Korean National University of Arts’ film program); Notes on Biology (Will Madden’s imaginative stop-motion SXSW winner makes a strong case for doodling in class); We’ll Become Oil (the Deepwater Horizon oil spill reaches Romania in Mihai Grecu’s “experimental documentary”); Street Vendor Cinema (Clarissa Knoll treats a chaotic Brazilian street market to 15 minutes of fame as a makeshift soundstage); Tumult (Norse warriors meet their match in a barren land in U.K.-based John Barrington’s 13-minute short); and Fireworks (Victor Hugo Duran’s short slice of adolescent life is set in Los Angeles on the 4th of July). The program also includes local filmmaker Erik Bosse’s short The Cucuy Club as well as selections from the Rivard Report’s new videographers’ showcase San Antonio in Motion. Free; 8:45pm; Alamo Street Eat Bar, 609 S Alamo, (210) 227-2469, alamostreeteatbar.com; slabcinema.com; futureshorts.com.