D.C. Cousins, Swimming in Film's Big Pool

'Radical' Arrives in Cannes With High Hopes and Low Flash

CANNES, France, May 20 -- There are big films and little films here; documentary films and animated films; films with movie stars and films from Belgium. But by far the most numerous are the many, many films that no one will ever see. This is the story of Dan and Guy, who came to the Cannes Film Festival with one of the latter.

Deep in the convention center, which is called the Palais here, there is a sprawling supermarket, where distribution deals are negotiated in 17 different languages, and in one corner -- as far away as psychodemographically possible from lobster lunches on the terrace at the Hotels Martinez or Majestic with Woody or Clint -- is the place called the "Short Film Corner."

The corner is where young and inexperienced filmmakers come to present their abbreviated labors of love. There are 2,148 shorts this year. Assuming a 10-minute running time for each, this is 358 hours of film. So you see: It is impossible. The big films of Cannes are shown in the 2,300-seat Grand Théâtre Lumière to an audience dressed in formal attire. At the Short Film Corner, you watch films in a cubicle, alone, like at work, on a computer.

We find Dan Boylan and Guy Taylor at the film supermarket, beneath the stairs. "We're in the basement," Boylan says. "Charging our phones." The two, who live in Washington, are here with "A Free Radical," a 24-minute movie, directed, produced, written by and starring Boylan and Taylor, as a pair of Middle East terrorists.

"It's outrageously funny slapstick," says Taylor, 31.

"Like Voltaire," says Boylan, 37. "There's that kind of poetry."

"But like a mockumentary."

"But about terrorism."

Who is the terrorist? "Nib Nedal," says Boylan. He spells the name two or three times, and we're like, Ned? Medal? Then we see it: Nib Nedal? Bin Laden.

"There are no references to Islam in the film," says Boylan.

"We're not trying to stir them up," says Taylor.

"We're from Boston."