As the poutine and shwarma food coma wears off, I start to read through my festival booklet and try to remember why I circled certain films. Overall the festival was a tremendous success. I was inspired, moved, and enchanted by the expertly programmed screenings. Over the four days of screenings, I witnessed nine or ten hours of short animated films. In this review you will find my opinions on direction, technique, and impact of some of most memorable films. Also I will share my experiences meeting the filmmakers.
Experimental Shorts:
Sync by Max Hattler
A vortex of perfectly-timed spinning mandalas brought me to many places throughout the nine minute journey. It was created to be a floor projection installation. The viewer is intended to walk around the sinkhole of polygons. Seeing it on a huge movie screen is without a doubt a very different experience. Instead a passive gallery patron viewing a site specific piece I was immersed in a tunnel of moving circles and stars. Every optical trick is exploited by Hattler in this film. He uses beta movement and phi phenomenon inside the rings which are moving into the center. The effect is that your eye is pulled into middle while the undulations push your focus from spot to spot. This push and pull brings a certain weight and gravity to piece.
Many Go Round by Yoshihisa Nakanishi
Animators must endure a lot of pain to create art. This is film is a great example of how the tedium of a meticulous process can yield amazing results. I was blown away with the precision and engineering of his cutout boxes. He brought two of the boxes to Meet the Filmmakers and they turned out to be about the size of a Rubix Cube. He explained that all the animation was done on the computer and printed out. The paper was then cut and folded into the boxes. Although the technique was incredible, the film overall left something to be desired. When the process becomes the driving force of exploration in experimental film there is only so far the director can take you. This means that I was filled with a sense of awe and amusement while watching the film but that was all. There was nothing lasting about the work other than "Wow, he cut a ton of little guys out of paper." Experimental film is at its best when it brings about a discovery of something unexpected and intangible. This one seemed a little predictable.
Paint Showers by Miguel Jiron
Ever wondered what your windshield would look like if you drove through downpour of acrylic paint? Well here you go. I caught with Miguel and asked him about his process. A multi-plane shooting set up was used to experiment with depth but most of the shots are compiled digitally. He originally created the piece as a massive building sized projection for a show in L.A. The idea is give the feeling that is actually raining paint. He was excited to tell me that he used a real Oxburry animation stand with all the knobs, glass, and slidey bars. He was super jealous when I told him about relic computer controlled Oxburry that we have at MassArt. At Meet the Filmmakers he explained his main challenge was keeping the paint from drying. He used tons of glycerine to combat this issue. It proves to be a good experiment and is worth a second look.
Microphobia by Nikki Schuster
This film was one of my favorites. But, everyone else seemed to dislike it. At seven minutes long it did seem to drag on at parts, but the imagery was unique and interesting enough that my attention was held (and I am like a 10 year old who just blew a line of pixie stick sugar). The thing that I took away from it was the format. It played with expectations. First everything was symmetrical then the layout broke out of this. Everything was very flat but then depth was explored. The film set up rules and then broke them. Also the sound design was very fitting and made the film very close and tangible.
Strata #3 by Quayola
This film was in my opinion the best use of digital media in the festival. It combined classic paintings with state of the art programming in order to deconstruct beauty itself. Rendered figures are broken down into polygons. Their perfect geometry is expressed with white lines and triangles of color. Shards of light float out of the canvas similar to the way your brain constructs the third dimension out of a flat painting. In the end the color drops away and what we are left with a map of the painting and all of its naked geometry. To me this piece symbolized the way new technologies strive to decode the mysteries of the past but end up altering the subject and creating ephemeral world of light and lines.
Two by Steve Subotnick
By far the best film in the festival. And I am not just saying that because he is my teacher. Ok, maybe I am. But still, this film was incredible. So much kinetic energy. So much character is infused into these two little dancing shapes. Steve explains that it started as one horizontal series of drawings. Through a struggle with how to make the film work he decided to rotate it 90 degrees and double it up. The result is what he describes as an argument between the shapes. The only digital effect used were fades and slight pixel-blending during the part where it looks like broken glass.
F5 'Hello, I Like You' by Mixtape Club
Flowers, screws, and cool patterns. 'Nough said.
Bout by Malcom Sutherland
This filmmaker is a very down to earth and honest artist. In the MTF he was asked what his biggest challenge was and how did he work past it. His response was that film-making is like playing a jazz song. You have to let the work inform you and let yourself go where it takes you. He said he did not intend to create such a dark film but through following his intuition he made decisions that led him there. First the red dots where in green but a rendering problem in flash produced them in red, after seeing it in red he couldn't have it any other way. His inspiration for the film was his experience at a Lucha Libre wrestling match. He says the feeling of being in the crowd (knowing who the villain and the hero were, knowing when to cheer or boo, knowing who is evil and who is good) is a primal feeling that connects him to the animal inside himself and others. This film is an exploration of this and the result is absolutely beautifully hypnotic and awe-inspiring.
Galeria (Gallery) by Robert Proch
Thick jazzy forms dance through a shopping center engaged in a game of products and seduction while a pit bull waits outside tied to a post. I could say that the filmmaker intended to deliver a message of consumerism, animal neglect, and gender inequality but that would be missing the point. The real message of this film is one of energy, movement, and style. It becomes a joyous celebration of what the eye is willing to believe when it looks at animation. The film is not online yet but the artist's website
gives you a good idea about what your missing.
Une Seconde Par Jour (One Second Per Day) by Richard Negre
Winner of Best Experimental/Abstract Animation, One Second Per Day was one of those films that stays with you for a while. The concept was to create one second of animation everyday for one year. That means sitting down and drawing 25 frames everyday. Could you devote 2 - 7 hours of your life everyday for a year? I know I couldn't. I met Richard on the first night and talked with him a bunch throughout the festival. He was friendly and insightful. He described his film as a performance. The method of creation is so closely linked to the outcome it becomes naked in the viewers eyes. All of the tricks that animation is known for are left out. What we receive is something more like a log or journal of the artist's thought process throughout a calendar year. He stamps the bottom of every drawing with the date thus taking the anticipation of the end out of the film. This allows the viewer to forget about trying to understand something before it is over and lets them lose themselves in the undulation of abstract geometry. Richard's skill is impeccable. The movements are so smooth that they could be mistaken for digital. Also, there is honesty exhibited by Richard in this film that is quite rare to find. During the month of August, for whatever reason, Richard took some time off. From the 15th to about the 22nd the screen is blank with the date flickering away at the bottom. The reaction in of the crowd was incredible; laughs, cheers and clapping during this five second window of blankness. It is very rare that an abstract animation can draw such a response from first time viewers. At the end of the festival I purchased a frame from Richard (this was his method of financing the film) and it now hangs on my wall. It reminds me what can be achieved with dedication and rigor.
Keha Malu (Body Memory) by Ulo Pikkov
Estonia, a small remote European country that borders Russia, has known much pain. It has been occupied and abused by many other countries. In the early 1990's Estonia regained independence and has now one of the most free and functioning democracies. It is also a leader in the animation world. This film is a harrowing depiction of a train's cargo car filled with women made of string. An unseen force pulls the figures through the slits in the walls. The women fight to stop from being unraveled but cannot win against the terrible force. Even though the premises is so preposterous it still creates a deeply emotional response. The real magic of the film is the way it brings so much depth and realness to the situation. The final image, a coal powered train traveling through a forest with light snow on the ground, leaves me with a thought of the Holocaust and the unspeakable horror humans have inflicted upon each other. It is so inspiring to see an director use a medium like stop-motion, which lends itself to cartoon comedy, to challenge and impassion the audience.
Heliotropes by Michael Langan
Upon viewing this film in the context on the competition I was not blown away. Maybe it was because I am familiar with Langan's work and was expecting something with lots of inventive camera tricks or surreal concepts. This film is very grounded in reality and does not try to over stimulate senses as some of his past work does. Upon a second viewing I was much more responsive to the concept and execution of the film. The connection between human travel and nature's flow is something I think about from time to time and this film does a great job exploring it. Two things that jump out at me as artful juxtapositions are the perfect spiral at the center of the jet engine and the in the final scene, a sunflower blows in the wind as we hear the sound of a 747 passing overhead. In the end I think this is a fine endeavor and it is always good to see an artist develop and grow. But, I do not think it worked in the context of the festival.
Narrative Shorts:
The Pig Farmer by Nick Cross
This was the first film of the festival and it kicked it off right. Beautifully animated in classic Looney Tunes style, this film takes the classic farmer-hunter-wolf-vengeance and spins it out of control. References to drug culture, the Mason killings, the 911 tragedy, and political cartoons are made. But, at MTF, Cross insisted that the film was created with no political or social message in mind. He simply wanted to do a "barnyard cartoon" and let the story unfold most naturally. His expert use of media (tablet for drawing, painting, animating) is a sign of the times. We live in an environment where a single artist with the help of digital tools can produce a film with the look of a classic cel cartoon all by themselves. It took Cross two years to create the piece and made use of crowd-sourcing donation websites to partially fund the production. He gives prints of frames to the people that support him. Check out the page for his new film Black Sunrise
Maly Listonosz (Little Postman) by Dorota Kobiela
We live in very exciting times. Computer technology is advancing at an alarming rate. Animators have more complex tools at their disposal than ever before. When a director chooses to use very advanced techniques it must be with purpose and an awareness for the associations that are inherent in the media. I did not feel that Kobiela made the right decisions in terms of the tools to use for this piece. She billed it as the first ever 3d painted animation. This means that the animation was done by hand on canvas then brought into 3d software where it is placed on CG walls and buildings. By projecting and painting each frame on top of the previous the movement was created. This technique (minus the projection) was perfected by Caroline Leaf (using clay on back lit glass), William Kentridge (charcoal on paper) and Blu (black and white paint on walls) as well as many others. It is a beautiful and rare technique. What makes straight-ahead paint animation so valuable is that it requires pure animation finesse. One must think on their feet and have great confidence in their movements and direction. There is no re-doing or trashing of frames. Nothing can be fixed in post-production. This form of creating film is a performance of the animation process. The reason why Little Postman looked stale was because the paintings were not done by animators at all. They were done by teams of painters that simply traced over a projection of each frame of animation. The technical effect is the same but since the creation method is assisted by projection there is a disconnect between the performance of animating and the final execution. The movements are way to smooth and without the a sense of improvisation.
After getting past the technique, I could not find myself committing to the story. The title cards gave a great background, the brave boy scouts that delivered mail during World War II, but once the film started I quickly realized that the attention was more focused around wowing the viewer with visual stunts than a compelling story. Since I did not enter into the story emotionally the ending seemed fancifully and not fitting to the horror of war from a small child's perspective.
It always good to see new techniques and ways of creating animation but a director must always think about a message or emotion that they are intending to impart on the viewer when choosing a technique. When the science informs the art interesting things can happen but in this case the spectacle swallowed the heart.
Another film from the festival that used this technique too it's traditional advantage is Hisab
Intel 'The Chase' by Adam Foulkes & Alan Smith
Oh Wow! She just jumped into Google Satellite! Dude she's all made of numbers! I like that part that looked like mortal combat. This film dives into complex themes of identity, gender equality, and race relations and under the post-modern guise of a simple technology commercial. A very subversive work that I am sure will studied and debated for some time to come...
Swimming Pool by Alexandra Hetmerova
A man waits for the public swimming pool to close and then sneaks in to have a little moonlit dip. The heavy stylish design of the piece are pleasing. The humor and pacing worked. Everything seemed right. It was cute. But the reveal in the end left me a little disappointed. Maybe, I don't have much patience for cuteness or maybe u expect film to challenge me a bit more. It was a too easy.
Animal Kingdom by Nils Hedinger
Humans are animals that control their animal instincts with drinking, smoking, and watching TV. What we really want to do is run wild. This is a great concept for a short but in Animal Kingdom the animation technique was not interesting enough for me to be taken out my head. This means that I was constantly thinking about how it was done and design choices. It lacked a clear voice and as with Swimming Pool it seemed a bit to easy. this film had great potential but I just wish that the creator given the art of film a little more attention.
Romance by Georges Schwizgebel
Georges Schwizgebel is one of my hero's. Through artist discovery he has created a truly unique technique and style. His work is instantly recognizable with all of its perspective shifts and seamless transitions. When he creates a film that is all one continuous shot you become very aware of the power of animation as a relentless waterfall of imagery. Seeing this film projected from a 35mm print was very moving experience. Getting to meet him after the screening and let him know what an inspiration he is to me was incredible. This film was a departure
Haru No Shikumi (The Mechanism of Spring) by Atsushi Wada
Animation's can use many different emotions as entry-ways into the viewers heart. Atsushi Wada uses happiness. When a film can make me laugh and also make me think and come away with a new feeling about something in the film than it has done it's job. Deftly rendered movements show the invetability of nature and human courisity. I love to watch film that blur the imaginery line between
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