West Side Highway (shorts in competition) May 3, 2006

This year our NY, NY shorts program travels from downtown to uptown, with a few emotional stops in between. We begin with a lower Manhattan breakfast delivery in The Falling Man. A young immigrant adjusting to life in New York discovers it's not always a Piece of Cake, and a teenager's carefully wrapped birthday present is the focus of Orange Bow. The lives of two strangers converge under the Brooklyn Bridge in Shiner. A woman looks back on love and loss in the frenetic Carla Cope, while cocktail hour becomes less than cordial for two old friends in Twenty Dollar Drinks. The program concludes with King of Central Park, in which a young man in the midst of a quarter-life crisis gets some therapy alfresco.

Program Contains:
The Falling Man
Directed By: Kevin Ackerman
2006, 11 min
A Windows on the World waiter is sent down to the 103rd floor but cannot find the Canter-Fitzgerald employee who placed the order, nor anyone else. It's 9:41 a.m., September 11, 2001. Inspired by the September 11 photograph that ran once in The New York Times before being banished by the mass media.

Piece of Cake
Directed By: Cynthia Boorujy
2005, 10 min
Piece of Cake follows a young immigrant woman on an important day as she tries to balance the mundane and the momentous in her new life in New York City.

Orange Bow
Directed By: Diandrea Rees
2005, 14 min
Orange Bow humorously chronicles a teen's tedious journey from his house in Brooklyn to a neighborhood birthday party. Along the way, he encounters a handful of mundane obstacles, from a disinterested gift wrapping clerk to a nonfunctioning building elevator. Just as the frustrated teen is about to reach his party, he is hit with a highly unexpected surprise. Inspired by a true story, this winsome short provides a slice of what it is like to grow up in Brooklyn.

Shiner
Directed By: Mike Doyle
2006, 14 min
An elderly, obsessive-compulsive hoarder sits contemplatively on a stretch of sand underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Along comes a young boy from the projects, whose face bears the telltale signs of physical abuse. The mere sight of the boy immerses the old man in memories of his own childhood, when he too suffered horrible abuse. Nevertheless, by the end of the film these two strangers will have changed each other's lives.

Carla Cope
Directed By: Aileen McCormack
U.S.A., 2005, 5 min
A story of life, love, and loss centered on the September 11 tragedy in New York City, this timely short follows Carla through the city as she looks back on all she has lost while she grapples with the uncertainty of her future.

Twenty Dollar Drinks
Directed By: David Brind
U.S.A., 2006, 15 min
Fifteen years ago, Star (Sandra Bernhard) and Betty (Cady Huffman) shared the stage of an off-off Broadway theatre company. Today, Betty is a New York single mom, doing voiceover work for denture commercials, and Star has just won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. When the two actresses reunite for a drink, the conversation spins from cordial chitchat to catfight to existential crisis.

King of Central Park
Directed By: Max Winkler,
David Gelb
U.S.A., 2006, 27 min
After escaping a marriage arranged by his eccentric family, 23-year-old Isaac seeks refuge in the utopian greenery of Central Park. When Isaac's family sends his childhood therapist to retrieve him, the two lost souls search for self-discovery without realizing the significance each holds in the other's life.

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of globetrotterny.