The Kinemastik International Short Film Festival has become a summer staple for cinephiles looking to escape the multiplex and experience something fresh from further afield.

This year’s seventh edition took place in Herbert Ganado Gardens, Floriana, over two days at the tail end of July. Moodily lit (generally dark, in fact) dotted all over with candles and the shimmering reflection of multiple screens, the gardens were geared for a mixed bag of screenings that promised much and on the whole, delivered.

While the quality selection of this year’s short films was definitely weighted to Sunday, the Saturday main screen showing included a few items of quality.

Postmodern camp extravaganza These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us (Michael Robinson, US) featured a hot mess Elizabeth Taylor, circa 1963s Cleopatra, caught in an eternally voluptuous and increasingly disturbing wet-dream with a looped Michael Jackson (performing his 1992 hit Remember The Time) offset by 1980s fractals and Ancient Egyptian ice-skaters. If it all sounds mad, that’s because it was.

That Thing You Drew (Kerri Davenport Burton, UK) provided hearty laughs with the story of a girl’s phallocentric art obsession, and perhaps glimpses of bitter-sweet humour that helped ease along some of the stodgier Saturday choices.

Bathing Micky (Frida Kempff, Scandinavia) was a cut-to-the-quick documentary of a Nazi regime survivor whose real survival is revealed to be her indomitable good spirits when faced with old age. Husband and close friends long dead, she daily visits the ocean and spends time with her extended family – a testament to enduring vitality.

Also memorable, for different reasons, Corbusier Situations (Naga­saki and Liska, Japan/Germany) documents a guided tour around a Jeannerent apartment complex. Overlong and a little tedious, anybody with an interest in the modernist architect’s work as narrated by a drunk B-star actor whose slurring drawl switches from German to English at the drop of a cowboy hat shouldn’t miss this short. If “the house is a machine for living in”, this one has a few screws loose.

Sunday was altogether more satisfying and featured two Maltese shorts. Ardor: Infinity as Self-Reference by Luke Azzopardi was an interesting experiment in music and colour. Kenneth Scicluna’s Daqqet ix-Xita (which listed its inspirations as Hamlet and the city of Valletta) was darkly atmospheric and included an evocative (if somewhat overused?) instrumental piece based off the L-Għarusa tal-Mosta folk theme.

The dialogue was formal, the actions mannered, and generally it felt as though we were watching some kind of living animation. The entire effect was fascinating with commendable attention to detail and high production value.

29 (Carlos Armella, Mexico) was perhaps the festival’s dark horse (and garnered my vote in an after-screening ballot, and the votes of most people I spoke to) a magical realist narrative about a young man’s promise to marry his childhood friend and his journey through the city and farmland to find her.

Simple, effective and lyrical story-telling, qualities largely absent from other offerings at the festival, were a pleasure to see. The organisers knew what they were doing by placing this film first in the Sunday line-up, and I for one was inspired to research more of Armella’s work – his 2008 short Tierra y Pan won the Golden Lion for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival.

Endgame (Wim Vanacker, Belgium/France) was enjoyable because it was in French (if for no other reason); Skateistan: To Live and Skate (Orlando Von Einsiedel, UK/Afghanistan) brought focus on the political struggle of women and youths in Afghanistan in a typically heavy handed manner.

However, the image of a woman in her cobalt blue chadri peeking through the grille as a young girl flies down a skating ramp was certainly memorable.

The festival included one of Spike Jonze’s latest features, Scenes from the Suburbs. It’s fun to see that no matter what he does, whether it’s a child’s frolic with menacing-but-cuddly wild things or a freefall into John Malkovich’s brain, there’s an atmosphere entirely his own.

Co-creator of Jackass and Charlie Kaufman collaborator, Jonze managed to produce a pitch perfect recreation of heavily saturated adolescent angst against a threatening backdrop of the suppressed violence that has become part of our daily lives.

A promise of variety in the arid monotony of mainstream fare, Kinemastik’s Short Film Festival provided some welcome respite and the chance to meet with other people committed to alternative cinema in Malta.

Growing interest and demand might see new organisations rise to the challenge and screen their own selections. Anything that promotes a second look at something new, a chance to experience and explore, must be a good thing.

If the pleasure of cinema encourages a deeper sense of the world, that’s one big victory for this Maltese summer film festival.

www.kinemastik.org