Short Competition 4 of the Ottawa International Animation
Festival offers one of the more consistently strong line-ups of the festival.
SC4 features two award-worthy standouts and no duds. There are no fart jokes here;
there are only inspiring works of animated art.
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| Reizwaesche |
Cor (Ana Linnea Lidegran
Correia; Portugal, 3:47) opens the programme with a lovely tale of a paintbrush
that was forgotten by its owner, but then comes to life when a little drop of
ink falls from its tip and creates art. Following Cor is the rascally funny Reizwaesche (Jelena Walf &
Viktor Stickel; Germany, 1:03), which hilariously depicts two friends who watch
their aunt hang laundry. Her cartoonishly large posterior waddles along the
clothesline and gives a white eclipse as big as the moon each time she bends
down to get her clothing; however, her generous backside gives the boys (and
audiences) a fine plane for good cinema.
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| Choros |
One of the two great feats of cinema in Short Competition 4
is the experimental/abstract film Choros (Michael Langan & Terah
Maher; USA, 13:00). Choros showcases
the medium’s ability to animate the body in a languid and lyrical dance. The
movements of one woman give rise to a chorus of dancers as the filmmakers eloquently
trace the motions of the dancer’s lithe body. Beautiful and hypnotic, Choros is a stunner!
After the bodily glory of Choros comes a double-bill of cat fancy for animal lovers. I Saw
Mice Burying a Cat (Dmitry Geller; China/Russia, 5:45) is a strange and
farcical story of a sacrifice gone awry. Cat
features bold, imposing animal figures, the best of which is the proverbial
feline in this cat and mouse tragedy. “Beware of people who dislike cats.”
Similarly, a striking red cat unfurls the head-spinner of the visuals in Kottarashky
& The Rain Dogs ‘Demoni’ (Theodore Ushev; Canada/Bulgaria/Germany,
3:45), a music video from the director of the Genie-winning short The Lipsett Diaries.
Short Competition 4 continues with a mix of experimental and
commercial films. Thunder River (Pierre Hébert; Canada, 7:56) is an intense
exploration of the fissures that ripple through the rocks along the St-Lawrence
River, while Dreams (Keiichi Tanaami; Japan, 6:00) is a colourful
psychoanalytic homage to memory. The “bizarro prize” of the programme goes to The
Great Rabbit (Atsushi Wada; France, 7:00), a narrative(ish) film about
children and their belief (or lack thereof) in the Great White Rabbit. Told in
the storybook-like sketching of pencil on paper, The Great Rabbit asks if consciousness changes over time and if so,
how? Finally, more animals wander through Short Competition 4 with the promotional
video World Wildlife Fund ‘100% Renewable Energy’ (Amica Kubo &
Tori; Japan, 2:45), a colourful plea for sustainability that is made all the
more compelling by its techno beat and surfing panda.
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| Plume |
The best film of Short Competition 4, however, is its
centrepiece. Plume (France, 14:42) is a nightmarish feat of puppetry by
Barry Purves. A winged man falls and has a hostile encounter with the strange
demons that drawl from the shadows. A struggle emerges, with the heavenly feathers
of the winged creature becoming a prize for which the demons fight. The darkness
of Purves’s film is nicely offset by the glowing light that radiates from the
creature’s wings. Plume is a ballet
of sorts or an operatic tragedy between man and beast. The skilled puppetry of the
film makes Plume one of the most
unique, compelling, and powerful films of the festival. It’s easy one of OIAF’s
standout films.
