By Stephanie Buckley

• 1:15 p.m.–2:15 p.m. on Friday, March 6 at Flagship Theater #4 (followed by filmmaker Q&A)
• 12:15 p.m.–1:15 p.m. on Saturday, March 7 at the Princess Royale (followed by filmmaker Q&A)

I, like most people, think a lot about work. Even when I’m not at my nine-to-five, most of my thoughts revolve around the workday and its brutal mundanity. Decompressing from the day, preparing for the next, or just reflecting on how I, at times, feel uniquely unsuitable for a life of paid work. I’m thinking about the possibility of utopia, a life without work: the routines, the made-up jobs and tasks, the unnecessary stress and urgency. I’m hoping for a world in which humans can live more like they were meant to — in which we have time to spend together, enjoy hobbies, learn new things, and spend time outside. The four shorts in the Hard at Work showcase range in tone from melancholic and reflective to slapstick and satirical. But in all of them, these filmmakers draw on our common feelings of exhaustion and ennui, and the relationships that can form in a pressure-cooker environment, to say something interesting about how work shapes our lives, and how it shapes (and doesn’t shape) our identities.

End of the Show

End of the Show is ostensibly about work, but ultimately it’s a tale of self esteem and self image, and how it’s shaped by the roles we’re made to play in this world. We meet Greg at the end of a long shift at a movie theater as he argues with an ex-girlfriend who’s constantly putting him down. The viewer quickly realizes that the girlfriend is a hallucination, a projection of Greg’s own insecurities, amplified after she left him without explanation. At first, as Greg argues with the afterimage of his girlfriend in the car, I had trouble identifying with the protagonist. Sure, she was callous, constantly putting him down and telling him to get a real job, but this depiction of her couldn’t really be her, right? And besides, who would want to date a manchild with a dead-end, minimum-wage job? And of course this is how he sees her — as the bitch who left him, who never gave him a chance, who thought she was better than him. Greg’s projection of his ex-girlfriend, who continues to live “rent free” in his head, initially made me angry on her behalf. But soon, both Greg and the audience realize that he’s just talking to himself. It’s him who worries he “isn’t a real man,” that everyone hates him, that no one will ever love him again. We follow Greg on a quiet, dreamlike journey of self-acceptance, in which he chooses kindness and lets go of some of that anger — both at himself and his ex. He deletes her number and follows up about the new job he’s been interviewing for. I found myself pleasantly surprised by End of the Show, a quiet meditation on how easy it is to become stuck and how work influences our perceptions of ourselves.

The Incident

Lawrence Jointer

The Incident cleverly elevates the stakes of social workplace faux pas to David Fincher-level tension. Two coworkers, Helen and Dina, fight for the friendship (or affection?) of their coworker, Woody, leading to an intense rivalry that culminates in an incident at a work barbecue. As the women give conflicting accounts of the incident (and what led up to it) to HR, director Lawrence Jointer uses intense music and camerawork to poke fun at the way small incidents — a spilled salad, for example — can feel like life or death when we’re at work. After ratcheting up the tension to a boiling point, a twist at the end — and Rob Chen’s hilarious performance as Woody — brings a sense of relief.

Fiance Fake-Out

Rachel is an overworked, underappreciated office worker who’s determined to get a weekend off from her supervisor, a caricature of an evil boss who expects slavish devotion to the workplace. Simone Kisiel’s Fiance Fake-Out pokes fun at an aspect of office culture that I think about constantly but rarely see mentioned — that childless or single people are assumed to have endless free time to devote to work compared to their counterparts with spouses and kids. Some people might seem to get more leeway in the workplace based on their perceived importance in the lives of other people.

Rachel ad libs and invents a fake fiance to get her hard-earned weekend off, but her plan quickly goes awry when her coworker, Casey, gets involved. Fiance Fake-Out is a sly comedy (sometimes verging on rom com) that manages to skewer modern office culture while still keeping the mood light.

The Last Donut

Mindy Spencer’s The Last Donut closes out the showcase with a bit of levity. In this past-faced, colorful animated short, two characters duke it out over the last donut in the breakroom. A comic-book-like action sequence, punctuated by a jazzy score, emphasizes the heightened, absurd nature of our daily routines — where little wins, like scoring the last donut at work, can mean the difference between a good day and a bad one. Though neither of the characters end up getting what they want in the end, they end up laughing over it, encouraging the audience to take life a little less seriously.