Short Hymn_Silent War 03. (Short Takes).

2002 24m prod Canadian Film Centre, p Sandy Reimar, Kate Kung, d Charles Officer, sc Charles Officer, Tomai Kobayashi.

Told almost entirely without dialogue, Short Hymn_Silent War 03 is an emotionally charged tale of the fateful intersection of two black families devastated by an inadvertent and fatal shooting in an apartment-block stairwell. The victim's mother, his widow and baby, and the mother of the young man who fired the gun all mourn and ponder their loss, seeking a way to come to terms with the seemingly hopeless cycle of violence in their community Although it does dramatically register a serious social concern, this film is not merely another expose on the problems of blacks in urban Canada. It is much more. Officer plays with narrative chronology and structure, making temporal braids out of the interconnectedness of past, present and future in startling ways. While the incorporation of home movies of kids pretending to shoot one another is denotative and redundant, Officer's other stylistic strategies (such as interior monologues of the mothers and the deceased) are effective and impressive. Revealing cinematic in fluences as diverse as Ingmar Bergman and Clement Virgo, Short Hymn_Silent War 03 is a work of considerable accomplishment and originality Especially compelling is the film's defiant denouement, which contains both anguish and hope, and a brave return to that broken world where all this sadness began.