ShortDocs

Discover hundreds of short audio gems produced in response to a prompt from Third Coast for the ShortDocs Competition, hosted between 2003 and 2016. Each year ushered in a new set of rules, new creative partners, and ever-more magical results.


Elizabeth's Mug

Elizabeth sits at her kitchen table, contemplating a recent coworker's gift and wrestling with the advice it gives her.

Frenchie Movie

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne (1572-1631)

Instant Coffee

A son remembers a woman who loved instant coffee and who may or may not have enjoyed being a housewife.

The Wishing Bell

A brother and sister fight over the gifts they receive from their father.

Stiff Peaks

2007 ShortDocs Winner! The first step in making cookies is to purchase a metal bike jingle-bell in a western mountain town.

Chinese Pants

An unscripted talk between a mom and her almost teenaged daughter, inspired by a handmade Mother's Day card listing all the things a mother should never do.

Miss Cholita Pageant

The "Miss Cholita" pageant celebrates a female ideal that is fast disappearing among Bolivian indigenous women. This year, the pageant was shaken by a scandal: the winner had turned out to have been wearing fake braids.

A Time to Tip

The courageous story of one coffee mug trying to get by in a house of people he hates. (Writing from the perspective of the mug in the first person, present tense.)

Latin Mass

Long before the women's movement even had a name, some Oak Park girls began questioning tradition without even knowing they were doing so.