Don't make short shrift of the potential gems at 1-Reel Film Festival

Contrary to grumblings from a few local naysayers, Seattle's short-film festivals are not a "ghetto" to be avoided. While it's true that short-film marathons require open-minded patience, devoted viewers are always rewarded: The best shorts are like self-contained epiphanies, perfect unto themselves and as artistically impressive as any feature film. There will always be duds along the way, but the finest shorts offer a quality of ingenuity you simply won't find anywhere else.

Bumbershoot's annual 1-Reel Film Festival is curated by Seattle International Film Festival programmers, and this year's lineup includes several repeats from SIFF's recent offerings, with a welcomed emphasis on jury- and audience-award winners. The 1-Reel festival is also easier to manage than the sprawling SIFF: Beginning with a kickoff program tonight at 8 and running through 10 p.m. Monday, the festival offers 126 films from 24 countries, neatly categorized by theme in 27 one-hour programs. Here are some recommended highlights based on SIFF favorites and 30 films made available for preview:

Friday

Friday's kickoff program features one of the weirdest films of the festival: It's the award-winning Belgian comedy "Mompelaar," and no synopsis can possibly do it justice. With plenty of morbid humor, it's a surreal visit to the sequestered world of a geeky loner who wanders the Flemish countryside, encountering strange locals and engaging in mysterious activities that apparently include homicide.

Also playing is an intriguing pair of Romanian mini-dramas: "Waves" concerns an unsettling occurrence on a public beach, and "Megatron" (winner of the Palme D'Or for shorts at Cannes), which follows a single mother in Bucharest as she copes with her demanding son on his eighth birthday. The multi-award-winning Dutch short "Contact" is a tightly constructed study of cause and effect in which several characters are connected by fateful chance encounters.

Saturday

The first full day of programming begins at noon with an encore of this year's "Fly Films" from SIFF; local filmmakers each had five days to shoot and five days to edit their 10-minute films, which were unavailable for preview.

The "SIFF Jury Award Winners" (3:30-4:30 p.m.) include the technically dazzling Indian film "Rewind," an audaciously executed exercise in reverse-motion storytelling; Finnish director Teemu Nikki's indescribably outrageous comedy "A Mate"; and the gentle Irish drama "New Boy," in which a new student gradually wins over his unwelcoming classmates. (Full disclosure: Yours truly served on the SIFF jury this year.)

"Cuisine Art" (7-8 p.m.) offers the delightfully understated British animated short "John and Karen" (returning from SIFF), in which a polar bear apologizes to his penguin girlfriend for insulting her during a recent spat; contrition never looked so charming. Also returning from SIFF is "Coffee and Allah," a pleasantly involving drama of cultural exchange from New Zealand.

Sunday

In the "Around the World" program (1-2 p.m.), Seattle filmmaker Stephen Hyde's "Skikashika" is a 10-minute portrait of Peruvian villagers who harvest ice from local mountains so they can sell snow-cones at local markets and festivals. That's all there is to it, but it's a colorful appreciation of a long-held Peruvian tradition.

"Antologia Polski: 50 Years of Polish Animation" (2-3 p.m.) is highlighted by Zbigniew Rybczynski's still-astonishing "Tango," the Oscar-winning 1980 short in which a crowd of characters enters a tiny room, one by one, meticulously synchronized so they never interfere with each other's movements. As the title suggests, it's literally a tango of painstakingly orchestrated animation, with live-action characters composited into a dance of motion that grows increasingly intricate with each new arrival. Several Washington State University film students get their own showcase with "Wazzu Films" (3:30-4:30 p.m.); unfortunately, none of the films was available for preview.

"Love and Marriage" (4:30-5:30 p.m.) includes a pair of films that play like mini-features: Brian Crano's 15-minute "Rubberheart" begs to be called "quirky" as a lonely guy introduces a date to his roommates: a trio of buxom mannequins. The British-German co-production "Amelia and Michael" is an infidelity drama that benefits from fine acting and first-rate production values.

One of the best films in the festival is the Chinese drama "August 15," based on a true story about a crime aboard a bus that turns tragic when the victim retaliates against the passengers who failed to come to her rescue. It's lean, mean storytelling in 22 engrossing minutes.

Monday

"All in the Family" (1-2 p.m.) includes "Dry Rain," a SIFF repeat from local filmmaker Matthew J. Clark. Filmed in Montana, it features character actor James LeGros as a melancholy father who reluctantly returns his son to his mother's legal custody. It's one of the most professional films in the festival, but it begs for feature-length expansion.

"Made in Seattle" (2-3 p.m.) is a showcase for local filmmakers and includes "Cookies for Sale," a Chuck Jones-meets-Girl-Scout comedy from prolific Seattle filmmaker Wes Kim, who employs some well-executed digital effects to punch up his live-action cartoon humor. Writer-director Shawn Telford returns to Bumbershoot with "A Night in the Sunlight," a low-key drama in which a young woman communes with her dead father in Ravenna's Sunlight Café; "Annie's First Dates" — winner of The Seattle Times' Three Minute Masterpiece digital film contest earlier this year — and "Third Days Child" are welcomed repeats from SIFF; and Jeremy Mackie's "Grey Linings" is aptly described as a showcase for Seattle in "a modern reinterpretation of the silent 'city films' of the 1920s and '30s." Jason Reid's "Trucker's Lullaby" is an offbeat, micro-budget music video for the title song by Seattle musician Tim Seely.

The rest of the 1-Reel Film Festival is yours to discover, and with category themes like "For the Ladies," "On the Edge," "The Twilight Zone" and "Dreamscapes," it's a safe bet that adventurous filmgoers will find something to enjoy.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net