After a stingy man eats some cherry seeds, a cherry tree grows on his head. A modern interpretation of the traditional Japanese Rakugo story, "Atama-yama", set in contemporary Tokyo. The director comments... "Through the nonsense Japanese old comic story Atama-yama, I wanted to express a mixed theme - a connection between one's identity and the public, and an everlasting idea such as the wonder of world being. This work is a completely independent project and took six years from planning to finish."
BROTHER - The childhood memory of a brother, his cigarette butts, asthma and head lice. UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER, (THE TRILOGY) have all screened at over 300 festivals throughout the world and have won over fifty awards, including 4 Australian Film Institute Awards (Oz Oscars), 3 Aspen Shortfest Awards, 2 Dendy Awards amongst others and these are not only in the animation category, but also for script and direction. Adam has become one of Australia's most celebrated filmmakers, his short film trilogy, Uncle, Cousin and Brother, is one of the countries most highly awarded and successful collection of short films. It has participated in over two hundred film festivals and has won over fifty awards. The films have won four AFI Awards from five nominations, and each has been shortlisted for Academy Award consideration. Adam's latest film HARVIE KRUMPET has also been nomiated for an academy award. For more info on HARVIE KRUMPET you can click here. To catch this short before the awards please visit our forum for a complete list of screenings near you.
A single blade of grass in an otherwise pristine parking lot sparks an escalating war of wills. The director comments... "My apartment in New York City overlooks a parking lot, and I've often wondered about what kind of character lives and works in the tiny booth on the lot. I imagined the attendant as an egotistical, territorial megalomaniac who rules his domain with an iron foot and immediately disposing of any uninvited trespasser, like a blade of grass. But, this is not your normal blade of grass as their duel of wits escalates, it becomes a Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote type of battle, with the final victory going to nature. I made the film in about two months and people enjoy its kinetic energy, good vs. evil theme, and the ending, in which nature survives over all."
Three shorts from the wild mind of Corky Quakenbush introduce us to the misguided world of Ricardo and his adventures.
Inspired by the cloning and birth of Dolly the Sheep, Moving Illustrations of Machines is a painstakingly detailed animated film. It consists of hand drawn ink artwork completed over a span of nearly four years. Describing the convergence of man and technology, it is a surreal look at a mechanical world where human eggs are genetically reprogrammed by ominous machines.
"The Ride to the Abyss"... Two riders on galloping horses disappear and reappear, alternating with other animated images moving to the same rhythm... Georges Schwizgebel has directed 15 animated films during the last three decades, while also creating theatre sets, designing murals and participating in numerous exhibitions. His films reveal a plastic universe, one that surprises us with its efficient and economical use of lines while demonstrating a real sense of animated motion - all this accompanied by surprising musical twists and turns.
A boy and his balloon.
COUSIN - The childhood remembrance of a cousin, his special arm, pet rocks and shopping trolley. UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER, (THE TRILOGY) have all screened at over 300 festivals throughout the world and have won over fifty awards, including 4 Australian Film Institute Awards (Oz Oscars), 3 Aspen Shortfest Awards, 2 Dendy Awards amongst others and these are not only in the animation category, but also for script and direction. Adam has become one of Australia's most celebrated filmmakers, his short film trilogy, Uncle, Cousin and Brother, is one of the countries most highly awarded and successful collection of short films. It has participated in over two hundred film festivals and has won over fifty awards. The films have won four AFI Awards from five nominations, and each has been shortlisted for Academy Award consideration. Adam's latest film HARVIE KRUMPET has also been nomiated for an academy award. For more info on HARVIE KRUMPET you can click here. To catch this short before the awards please visit our forum for a complete list of screenings near you.
Based on the novel by Jacek Dukaj, the Cathedral is the story of a pilgrim who arrives at the edge of the world at the end of a long journey. Here he finds the Cathedral, a place full of secrets. The Cathedral is not just a building, and the pilgrim is not just a man.
Produced exclusively for the first year of the Animation Show, this "trilogy" of shorts was animated, photographed, and completed in nine months (Oct 2002 to June 2003), during the off-hours of work on Hertzfeldt's new film, which was at the time three years into production. Shifting gears in the midst of such a difficult and relatively somber project to simultaneously animate something fun and silly again proved to be a welcome and much needed change. What was originally meant to be a very short trilogy to book-end the Show quickly ballooned into a much wilder and more experimental set of cartoons totalling eight minutes. Collectively, the three films are actually among Bitter Films' most expensive productions, due in large part to the multitude of special effects and trial and error experimentation required in photography. In addition to several optical effects shots - a backlight process developed for the new film but used for the first time here - there was a wealth of experimental animation: double exposures, shadow and lighting effects, stop motion hybrids, and more. The optical backlight effects (fire, lasers, etc) were all achieved traditionally and in-camera, via a process similar in theory to how the optical effects of the original 1977 Star Wars were created. As Hertzfeldt figured out how to pull more of these effects shots off, the metaphorical dam of additional ideas broke and the three pieces grew.
A dead solider wakes up to find himself with his gun, a widescreen TV, and a whole lot of time... The director comments... "My idea was to make a story where the character starts out a hero, turns into a coward and ends up a fool. It's basically a big cruel trick played on him by whoever controls the afterlife... It's nice to be able to make a movie that has a really unhappy ending, and yet people still seem to enjoy it. I know it's potentially controversial subject matter - there were complaints on Irish Radio after its run in the cinema... but at least I didn't try to tack on an upbeat ending, which I believe is a way of taking it more seriously."
UNCLE - The biography of a humble man, his lemon tree, chihuahua and crumpets. UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER, (THE TRILOGY) have all screened at over 300 festivals throughout the world and have won over fifty awards, including 4 Australian Film Institute Awards (Oz Oscars), 3 Aspen Shortfest Awards, 2 Dendy Awards amongst others and these are not only in the animation category, but also for script and direction. Adam has become one of Australia's most celebrated filmmakers, his short film trilogy, Uncle, Cousin and Brother, is one of the countries most highly awarded and successful collection of short films. It has participated in over two hundred film festivals and has won over fifty awards. The films have won four AFI Awards from five nominations, and each has been shortlisted for Academy Award consideration. Adam's latest film HARVIE KRUMPET has also been nomiated for an academy award. For more info on HARVIE KRUMPET you can click here. To catch this short before the awards please visit our forum for a complete list of screenings near you.
A collection of never-before-seen character animation and experiments 'from the archives' of Mike Judge, plus the very rare early short film, Huh? and the first Office Space animated short with Milton—later to become the inspiration for the live action feature film.
An animated short inspired by Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly. The puppet Butterfly lives alone on an island, until a white ship brings the handsome sailor Pinkerton. Their love affair grows until Pinkerton has to leave with his ship. The Butterfly gives birth and waits for her sailor to return. Years later when her prayers are answered her world is torn to pieces when he returns.
The cuckoos have taken over London and no one is safe! These Little Napoleons and Kaisers get a whimsical Metropolis-type assembly line going that will have you tapping your toes to the beat. This Vaudeville inspired tune is brought to us by “The Real Tuesday Weld’s".
The stone people have seen a lot in their everlasting lives atop their mountain, so they're only mildly amazed by the comings and goings inside the valley below. But when Mankind begins to progress and grow, this new behavior threatens the rocks' serenity.. The directors comment... Chris: "Rocks tries to elaborate on different perceptions of passing time. For example a five year old child will experience a month as being a really long time whereas an adult or elderly person experiences the same amount of time as being much shorter. Our protagonists Hew and Kew, being rocks, are living in an extremely different timespace compared to us humans. The goal was to change the perspective on human behavior, and maybe understand where we're coming from and where we might be going a little bit better by looking at it more globally... I always like to look at human nature from a different point of view, i.e. through the eyes of non-human protagonists. I think animation is the perfect media to apply this concept, which originates from an idea I came across studying social anthropology: You study foreign cultures and their differences in order to get a better understanding of your own culture and background. This approach offers a great way to understand anew what you might otherwise take as natural, because you experienced it everyday since you were born. More directly, nowadays the possibility of mankind just wiping itself out can be very disturbing, but wouldn't necesarily mean the end of the world." Heidi: "The main challenge for us was to make the two different techniques we used for our film fit togther. On one hand we had the model puppets, Hew and Kew, who we animated through traditional stop-motion. The model set they were sitting on was placed in front of a blue-screen, which on the other hand had to be replaced by a digital valley in the background and the rushing sky in postproduction. It was hard work to bring together the puppet set with the digital set exten
Originally produced through the Filmakademie School for Animation in Germany, this short introduction to the Animation Show welcomes you all to the program.
Man's best friend finds the park a very scary place. Bill Plympton's previous short film "Parking" was featured in last year's Animation Show.
Under the fluorescent lights and piped-in muzak of a Texas-sized grocery store, the Food Education Demo Specialists (The F.E.D.S.) struggle to keep their perky attitudes intact. From annoying customer habits to agoraphobic fantasies, each F.E.D.S. gives us an insider's look into the odd occupation of "slinging samples". Jennifer Drummond's work was previously seen in the Richard Linklater film "Waking Life."
A conceptually pastoral poem-film about the creative retirement of the ancient Greek woodland god, Pan. It imagines his unseen, forgotten spirit moving amidst a modern world.
After a car accident, Ben wakes up in hospital. Not knowing where he is or what is going on, he starts exploring the corridors...only to find that the staff don't have his health in mind! The hapless patient must pull himself together and do everything he can to escape. It's an action/horror/comedy - ending with the wheelchair chase from hell! Peter Cornwell spent years crafting "Ward 13" using the laborious stop-motion animation process, which originally started in the corner of his bedroom in his spare time. For most of the shoot Peter continued to work full-time at ABC TV & was able to complete the film with the help of the Australian Film Commission..
In a digital world, can analog find true love?
One man's interstellar fishing trip unexpectedly turns into the ride of his life.
A first love is corrupted as a man recalls his affair with a beautiful circus contortionist in this stop-motion animation of wooden manikins. At its heart, "Magda" is an off-center parable about lost innocence and the corruptibility of human nature. Visually, the film explores the use of extreme telephoto lenses, creating enigmatic scenes that reveal themselves over time and ghostly figures drifting in-and-out of focus. "Magda" is filmmaker Chel White's third adaptation of a story by radio artist and writer Joe Frank.
In an old forgotten military base far from civilization, a group of deranged military officers nurture their insanity.
After witnessing the accidental death of a stranger, Ruby seeks affirmation in the city around her, and finds it in surprising places. The technique chosen by Tilby and Forbis was arduous, to say the least: first, the basic action was shot on Hi-8 using human actors. Forbis wore a cardboard chicken beak while Tilby shot it. Then the footage was transferred to VHS tape, where individual frames were selected and printed using a video printer, and altered -- beaks, snouts and wings were added to turn humans into animals -- before filming the finished frames onto 35 mm. The result is animation that has a flickering, ghostly quality of an old negative filled with haunting images.
A grand fireworks display by PES.
A vast, beautiful study of time, life, death, and Tchaikovsky, exploring evolution on Earth over the course of a billion years. The Meaning of Life is the epic end result of tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly animated by Don over the span of four years.
KaBoooooom!
Dark and humorous, this extremely short film features a stream-of-conscious look at the writing process, told with animated images straight from the subconscious... or somewhere.
Bevis and Butt-Head introduce the 3rd Annual Animation Show.
When a boy and girl find an idol in the stomach of a rabbit, great riches follow, but for how long?
Tomoko arrives to London from Japan and accidentally discovers a mysterious, secret city underground, inhabited by friendly little aliens and a beautiful blossom. After she's found it, everything changes…
A series of dark and troubling events forces Bill to reckon with the meaning of his life—or lack thereof.
Islamic patterns and American quilts mix with the colors and geometry of flags. Collision is an abstract field of reflection.
After a brief problem with a lost set of keys, two astronauts continue their journey through the depths of space. While alone in the cockpit, Astronaut One discovers a big red button marked ‘Do Not Press’ hidden under a crossword puzzle. Curiosity gets the better of him and he cannot resist pressing the button. Unfortunately, he has unwittingly released one of their only two oxygen tanks. He decides not tell Astronaut Two.
Carlito, a small laboratory hamster, suffers all kinds of experiments.
Gerold the crocodile arrives home late to a household meeting in the apartment. It turns out his flat mates have turned against him.
“Guide Dog” is a sequel to the Oscar nominated short “Guard Dog”. This time our hero dog helps blind people with typical disastrous results.
Bob and Diane go to a movie in a one-dimensional world. It is probably not their first date, but it may be their last.
A giant tiger mysteriously appears in a big city, revealing the hidden reality in an otherwise ordinary night. Inspired by William Blake’s “The Tyger.”
On two islands lost in the ocean, two samurai clans fight for a little island.
After being brutally attacked in an alley, George decides he must learn to protect himself. A cocksure narrator walks him through five practical lessons of self-defense, perfect for the citizen on the go… or a nation-state on the rampage!
As the gap between a burning airplane and ground gets smaller, one passenger has other things on his mind…
“Shuteye Hotel” is a film noir murder mystery that takes place in a sleazy hotel. As cops investigate the gruesome murders they become victims of this evil force. What “Jaws” did to swimming, “Shuteye Hotel” will do for sleeping.
On acquiring a new Digi Videocam, Beryl becomes obsessed with the filmmaking process using it to articulate her desires and dreams as video diary. As “cineaste par excellence” she agrees to video the wedding of her friend Mandy, seizing the opportunity to imitate her filmmaking idols with disastrous & hilarious results.
Homage is paid to five classic arcade games. Enjoy Centipede, Frogger, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man games. All are aimed at evoking nostalgia for the intense arcade experience that spawned the billion dollar industry in the late 70s and early 80s.
