Footcandle Film Festival | Sunday Morning Shorts

A series of short films:

An Eternal Sound:
In the heart of rural North Carolina, Tom Lewtak pursues perfection in one of the oldest and most complex living crafts: Pipe organ building. This meditative journey follows Tom in his creation of a new organ, exploring the transcendent resonance of an eternal sound.

Daily Worker:
In a dark preservation lab in New York City, international student Ting Su works to digitize archival film negatives from the Daily Worker, the union newspaper begun in Chicago in 1924. A time capsule in reversal, the film patches together a collective and personal memory touched by the hands of daily workers.

The True Cost Of Power:
When the small town of Carrboro dares to sue Duke Energy for decades of climate deception, a damning pattern emerges of corporate power run amok. Despite knowing about climate risks since the 1960s, North Carolina’s monopoly energy utility has systematically misled the public while positioning itself as a clean energy leader. Through exclusive access to scientists, investigative journalists, and frontline communities, this documentary exposes the true cost of corporate power when billions in climate damages are paid by everyone except those who caused them.

A Man Who Takes Pictures of Flowers:
Jung Myung Kim, a photographer who has dedicated over 40 years to capturing wildflowers in Korea, shares his story of pursuing his passion for capturing flowers. Kim finds meaning and happiness in reflecting on his body of work, and his desire to take more pictures keeps him going as he battles an illness.

A Short Documentary About A Giant Pencil:
A Lake of the Isles homeowner and a Minneapolis chainsaw sculptor shape meaning (and a twenty foot tall pencil) from the twisted trunk of a fallen oak tree. But this pencil isn’t meant to last. Every year, thousands gather to sacrifice a part of the pencil in a sharpening ceremony, and in the process renew the collective promise to “do something.”

Concerto
Thirty years after her debut performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2”, renowned South African pianist and professor Nina Schumann prepares to return to the stage to perform the piece again. This time, however, she faces a profound new challenge: diagnosed with focal dystonia (an involuntary muscle-spasm disorder) and Parkinson’s disease, Schumann is gradually losing the technical skill that once defined her as a virtuoso. Despite this, her deep musical intuition and passion remain unwavering, fuelling her desire to keep performing. “Concerto” follows Schumann through her final week of preparation for the concert, blending present-day footage with archival clips from her prime. This juxtaposition captures the transformation of an artist confronting profound loss yet finding renewed purpose in the realisation that while technique may fade, the soul of music endures.