During a Q&A session after one of the first short film blocks at this year’s SXSW, an audience member turned the spotlight on programmer Lya Guerra and asked her about the curatorial aspects of her job, and how she organizes the order of the selected films. It was a great question, one that’s not asked often enough, and it put a bit of perspective on the art of programming a festival (and, indeed, programming is as much an art form as making a film). Short films at festivals cannot by necessity function in isolation, and it takes a real love of film to curate a program as strong as the one Lya has assembled this year; a lot of consideration has to go into not just what films make the cut, but which one might compliment another. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and I’d imagine that there are always some pieces that just don’t quite fit, no matter how good they might be.

Here, readers, I must offer full disclosure: a film of mine was one of those that apparently did fit. When I compliment the lineup, though, I don’t mean to be self-aggrandizing; it was truly an honor to be featured alongside these other films. I’ve already written about Glory At Sea; now let me turn my attention to a few of my favorites.

Small Apartment (dir. Andrew T. Betzer)

In a tiny urban apartment, on a bright spring mid-morning, a young couple make love. As one of Wagner’s Vorspiels swells through the tinny speakers of a radio, the man’s aged father watches the couple in the throes of their passion, peering through a small partition in the bathroom wall with a video camera in his hand.

What Betzer’s created out of this conflict of interest is a simple, quietly heartbreaking glimpse at the pure beauty of physical intimacy with another human being. The film is fairly explicit (it played in the Adults Only category when it premiered at Slamdance this past January) but is not lascivious in its intentions: rather, it offers a strong and pointed delineation between sex and pornography, between love and perversion. I was afraid this film would be too subtle to win people over, but no: it wound up winning the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking. Bravo.

The Execution Of Solomon Harris (dir. Wyatt Garfield)

This tale of an execution gone horribly wrong is a brilliant example of short filmmaking as a technical exercise. It’s a harrowing work, but its power is due as much to the style in which it’s been crafted as the story it has to tell. Taking a cue from the Dardenne Brothers, Garfield keeps his handheld camera glued to the upper body of the Prison Guard who negotiates first the procedure of the execution and then its complete dissolution. The camera whirls from one composition to another in four shots so carefully conjoined that one might be tricked into thinking it a single shot. It’s not, but that doesn’t detract from what Garfield and his crew have accomplished.

34 x 25 x 36 (dir. Jesse Epstein)

The title of this fascinating documentary refers to the dimensions of the perfect woman, as defined by the owner of the Patina V mannequin factory in California. Epstein traces the craft from the initial sculpture, where clay is molded into the image of a real model (who very nearly bites her lip when she’s told she’s being improved upon) to the molding process to the final assembly. Shot on a mix of straightforward video and impressionistic super8, the film gets particularly interesting when the factory owner traces the lineage from religious iconography to storefront fashion displays. By turns informative, funny and unsettling, 34 x 25 x 36 is a 100% perfect documentary, bite-size though it may be.

Warlord (dir. David Garrett)

Director David Garrett takes a cutesy, crowd-pleasing concept - a little boy imagines himself as a tribal warrior trapped within the confines of modern suburbia - and takes it to a very dark place. It’s still very funny, to be sure, but Garrett doesn’t pull any punches. If the film weren’t so subjective, it would be as disturbing as a Michael Haneke picture; as it is, there’s still something very chilling beneath the humorous subterfuge of the narrative. This film shared the Grand Jury Prize with Small Apartment.

The Second Line (dir. John Magary)

Europe, with its state funded arts councils, has a more vested cultural interest in short filmmaking, which is why it’s rare to see a short American narrative as polished as The Second Line. Which isn’t to say that it’s a Hollywood show; rather, this is a mature and intelligent work that’s been realized at the highest possible level. The Second Line is set in the subcultures of FEMA trailers that still house far too many residents of the 9th Ward and other poor neighborhoods, where everyone’s trying to get a leg up on a situation that seems designed to keep them down. Two young men (Al Thomspon and J.D. Williams, from The Wire) who are doing their best to keep their nose out of whatever trouble keeps presenting itself to them take a job from a white guy in a beat up car who needs help gutting his house. The situation that ensues is one of quiet, subsurface cause and effect; the resulting conflict has less to do with social injustice than it does the tug-of-war of conscience that can keep a good man down. The Second Line is a work of moral filmmaking that’s worthy of Kieslowski.

KID (dir. Miguel Alvarez)

In his Q&A, Miquel Alvarez promised that no animals were harmed in the making of KID- a fact which doesn’t lessen the brutal impact it had on this animal lover. The film is about a thirteen year old boy who, on his birthday, is accosted by his estranged father and forced into a particularly unpleasant rite of manhood. Alvarez found his young star in a local mall; his casting instincts are impeccable, because the central performance by Juan Meraz, and all the adolescent conflict implicit to it, is unforgettable.

I Hate You Don’t Touch Me, or Bat and Hat (dir. Becky James)

This animated piece of genius very deservedly won the the jury prize for Best Animated Short. In the effort of preserving it’s sanctity, I’ll just say that it’s impossible to describe, other than that it’s about a bat who is really, really proud of his hat. Becky James’ animation has a Sesame Street quality to it, but if any kid ever saw this while eating breakfast, he or she might be scarred for life. I can’t wait to show it to my little sister!