Animation Celebration One

Often the Orphan Annie of film fests, it was gratifying to see the number of people who turned out to support the laborious, self-flagellating effort that is animation - in all its vogues, from traditional cell to computerised. Blessed with the advantage of being short, at least you are not condemned, as in the live action section, to having to sit through 30 minutes of hell when something is irredeemably bad.

My only gripe would be the nature of the competition - if you believe in competitions for art that is in the eye of the Beholder anyway. It seems to me to be utterly unfair to pitch works supported by self-obsessed individuals against the financial comfort and clout given by those pieces sponsored by the Canadian Film Commission/Board (whatever).

Clearly, the services of people like Peter Ustinov and Daniel Lanois do not come cheap, nor do the legion of people employed to do stuff like shading. Even so, the work of one fanatic (and I mean that positively), Lee McCaulla ("Loose Tooth") who invested seven years of his life into his four minute film, was rewarded, and, in his words, he "felt vindicated". A touching moment as he grasped the plaque disbelievingly in his hands, telling us that we "all laughed in the right places" and "I've never won anything before".

I have always been fascinated by the morphing ability of animation; its capacity to stretch and play with reality, and, more importantly, to deliver a subversive message in a delightful, angst-free package. Perhaps because of this, my favorites were "Man's Best Friend" (Ben Gluck) and "Once Upon a Time..." (John Serpentelli), two absolute masterpieces of the genre. The former explores with consummate humor the reason for man's original sin - Adam dissed his dog by preferring the company of Eve so the jealous dog planned his downfall!! This delightful premise is played with expert timing and tongue-in-cheek visual and aural comedy, complete with a censor's strip mark across Eve's breasts. The film closes with the consequences of this awful sin- "Hell on earth - suburbia - yeah, hell on earth". Clearly, Adam should have stuck with the dog as his best friend!!

"Once Upon a Time...." delivers a five minute potted history of the USA, narrated with direct, uncluttered simplicity from a young boy's perspective. Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon actually - God knows why Anglos have changed his name) and his party arrived "and saw things that had never been seen before - except by the people who lived there" - a delightfully simple way of expressing the absurdity of the common notion that Europeans somehow "discovered" America. And the most depressing consequence if it all - "everyone stopped fighting and said 'What's on TV?' A giant step for Mankind". Talk about trenchant social observation.

Of the winners and Honorable Mentions, the only one which caught my eye was the pipe-cleaner bending "Wired for the Holidays" - a great dig at the empty absurdity of shoving up plastic trees decorated with kitsch baubles to somehow represent a jolly good time. The grand prize winner, "How Wings are Attached to the Backs of Angels" is, yes, very clever and all the rest, but its all edifice - no one's at home.

This was a great selection of the state of animation art today, and, in my opinion, superior to the extremely uneven live action works that have been presented thus far. I just wish there was more of it!!

Shorts Program: Two

I don't know whether I have just seen too many films or am just a cynical SOB in general, but the shorts presented so far have done little or nothing for me. Of the entire selection of seven films (one scheduled, "The Blue Boy", did not put in an appearance) shown, I would be at pains to select any one that had any meaningful impact on me in the way that much of the animated works did. Most outstanding from the technical aspect, with some great imagery and cinematic use of the camera, in the area of content I found them all, to varying degrees, lacking. Lots of sophomoric films by people who seem to derive their art from other people's work rather than any human experience of life. Where's the passion? Do the high economic entry barriers to film art mean that only white bread middle class Americans who've never LIVED actually make films??

A prime example of this is "Room 103", which I would best summarise as "pretty but pointless". Some beautiful black and white imagery of Prague just doesn't make up for an absence of content in a directly literal interpretation of Kafka's "The Trial". Delving into someone's head cinematically seems ludicrous when a giant cockroach, evidently emblematic of greater woes, is literally shoved onto the screen. Oh for some SUB-TEXT; show the literal as a mirror to the actual, and let the audience THINK or reach their own bank of memories.

"The Ritual" stands out for some great lines ("Success - it sucks successively") and a marvellous opening scene where the 350-pound man takes a dump and falls to a shitty end. Excuse the pun. Shot with flair, it is let down by obvious overacting on the part it its protagonists. Winner of the Experimental Award, "The Paraclete" (what??) put in an unscheduled appearance. On reading the synopsis afterwards, I still could draw no parallel with what I had seen. A sumptious 35mm USC student film, it seemed to me to explore the filmmaker's ethnic Serbian background within the cliched melting pot that is America. Obviously I was wrong, as the "Detroit cop....venturing to his childhood to confront (his) demons" was something that completely flew over my head. The Sumadija dancers and Ravania choir music that played as some sort of glue to hold the whole thing together were the aspects that most struck me. This films just seemend to be trying to do too much at once - some sort of conventional cop narrative interwoven with a commentary about being culturally lost in America. A strange mishmash of films.

Peter Lewis A true African-American, Peter has led a peripatetic lifestle, and after graduating from UCF with a film degree, he is pondering life as another wannabe, devoting his time to working on a novel, his thesis film, a suntan and the dubious benefits of Rogaine. Other Articles I've Written