Last November, we were quite excited about Kurt Kuenne’s devastating documentary Dear Zachary, while also being blown away by the fact that Kuenne had made a funny narrative-short film that was nothing like his unbelievably sad feature nonfiction. Now, with Zachary’s impending DVD release next week, we’ve decided to feature another one of Kuenne’s charmingly elaborate narrative shorts. The last one, Rent-A-Person, was a business epic in miniature; this one, Validation, is a romantic epic in miniature. We’re still blown away, but watching the films again, we’ve decided that they actually do have something in common with Dear Zachary — namely, an approach to storytelling (and Dear Zachary most definitely tells a story, albeit an unspeakably tragic and unbearably true one) that places us in a world where anything can happen, and where small moments can have grand consequences.
