![Box[ur]Shorts Film Festival](/images/stories/99.templates/logo.png){kind=logo}
box[ur]shorts™ Film Festival was conceived in 2005 after Giacun Caduff presented the idea of screening movies in jukeboxes to collaborator Ryan Reichenfeld. The two met a few months earlier at a reality TV show and decided to start a short film festival where filmmakers get a lot more exposure than at other short film presentations. “box your shorts!" – box[ur]shorts™ will put short films literally in a box. At Giacun’s apartment in Los Angeles, they constructed the prototype box that would later find its first home at Catch 22 Café in West LA.
The inspiration for the project roots in a 1970s art project where Giacun’s uncle Silvio Caduff would hang paintings in a menu box outside a restaurant in Basel, Switzerland. Taking the concept into the 21st Century, box[ur]shorts™ added LCD screens and interactive panels and gave birth to the movie jukebox. Silvio was named the project’s official Godfather.
Silvio Caduff
The first box was radical. It featured a 7-inch screen, speakers, headphone jacks and even a radio transmitter. Later, an interactive panel, start and restart button were added to the groundbreaking design. Artists painted the jukeboxes and even the inner life was a piece of art, or chaos, depending on how you want to look at it…
The year 2006 marked the kick-off of the 1st film festival competition. The goal was to screen the films in multiple locations, non-stop, throughout the year. A jury would name the best movie and award it with a pair of golden boxer shorts. And it all worked out! The first awards night took place in December 2006 and four lucky winners picked up their box[ur]shorts™ trophies.
During the first year, box[ur]shorts got established at a variety of places and presented the competing short films in locations from Los Angeles to New York City, Basel Switzerland to Hiroshima Japan. The venues included coffee shops, bars, laundromats, and later also a hair salon. In order to provide each location with a box, Giacun and Ryan went back to Home Depot and purchased a bunch of materials to construct more jukeboxes (see all).
Another milestone for the festival happened in 2007. Generous sponsorships made it possible that the winners got prizes worth $5,000 along with their trophies. The awards night also moved into the New Beverly Cinema where it took place every January until 2011. The show since then moved to another theatre, the Théâtre Raymond Kabbaz on Pico Blvd.
Every year, the box[ur]shorts™ team programs around 50 short films that go on to stream throughout the jukebox network as well as online at boxurshorts.com - That's where programmer Marc Hermann comes into the picture. Marc, a Swiss man, accidentially attended the first awards night and was a big fan of the festival since. He offered to create a clip portal that launched online at first and later was implemented in our new digital jukeboxes. It undergoes constant improvement. The latest update included qr-codes for every movie. That way, viewers at the box can snap a picture of the code and carry the film to wherever they are going on the phone.
The movies are judged by industry professionals such as actor Joel David Moore, actress Sophia Myles, 007-director Martin Campbell, Scott Prendergast and most recently Japanese writer/director Shunji Iwai. Other notable judges are SONY executive Stacey Kalish, entertainment attorney Dennis Fredricks, actress Julie Dray, producer Shannon Riggs and film critics Kit Bowen, Philip Martin, and Erik Childress (view all juries).
box[ur]shorts™ Film Festival is a division of A Bale Pictures, Inc. It is run by festival director Giacun Caduff and an awesome team. Ryan Reichenfeld stepped down from his active duty but will further serve the project as an advisor and indie ambassador. There are also many volunteers who are invaluable for the festival in order to make the annual awards night in January possible.
