shortcodes erratic at best

At one point, I was able to switch the filter bar to cats_dropdown; I then tried other options, my desirable setting being
years_dropdown(show_past=true);cats_dropdown;reset_link
however, that makes the entire shortcode fail — either the shortcode as such is shown on the page, or the default settings are used. Once this happened, even cats_dropdown stopped working, and the EXACT shortcodes from the examples in the documentation, i.e.,
years_hlist,cats_dropdown
or
years_dropdown(show_all=false|show_past=true),cats_dropdown;;reset_link
also gave the default behavior (at best); to me, it looks like this plugin has some serious initialization issues.
And it does not look like there is much active support here, either…

events-list 0.7.9

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]