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| Monkey Love Experiment |
Two of the three promotional animations are for film festivals: Elevator (Valentine Kemmer, Germany) for the Internationales Trickfilm Festival and Fight! (Marc James Roels, Belgium/France) for the 2013 Festival National du Film d’Animation. The former is a droll joke about the worst elevator pairing one could imagine while the latter is a riotous fest of friends fighting dirty. Both films are programme highlights for their quick wit and clever animation. Fight! director Marc James Roels returns to Ottawa after bringing the crowd-pleasing Oh, Willy to the festival last year, and animation fans can expect more riotous sock puppetry, only with a little less penis and a lot more vomit this time around. Anyone who thinks OIAF has some wild marketing will enjoy this pair of shorts.
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| Fight. Photo courtesy of OIAF. |
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| Imperial Provisor Frombald |
Violent animation then jumps off the screen in the poetic
and disturbing Hipopotamy (Piotr Dumala, Poland). This provocative meditation
on rape culture features a quartet of bathing women assaulted by a quartet of
boner-bearing men as director Piotr Dumaia converges the bodies in a
metaphorical rhythm. Hipopotamy has
an ambiguous ending, though, that makes much of what precedes it feel like
shock value. The arresting images nevertheless have a power that resonates
throughout the programme even if the film ultimately feels like rage without an
argument.
Stronger all-around
lasting power comes with 1000 Plateaus (Stephen Woloshen,
Canada), a jazzy experimental number that has an energy that can't be beat.
This lively travelogue, a standout among the experimental shorts of festival so
far, is one of the most impressive films in the competition, not simply for its
hypnotic images, but also for the final endnote that notes how the entire film
was made in the front seat of a car with only the most basic materials. The
energy of improvisation and riffing ring throughout this number and make it a
wondrous sendup (and addition) to the creative power of animation. Three cheers
to things conceived in cars!
Before conception comes a courtship in the fun opening act, Bear
with Me (Agata Bolanosova, Slovakia), which opens the programme. This
fun and adorable creature cartoon has characters and edges reminiscent of Dr.
Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
and the nostalgic nod is a warm, affectionate start to the programme.
Animals figure prominently in three more films from the
upper tier of Shorts Competition 1. Lumberjacked (Joel MacKenzie,
Canada), for example, is a very funny spoof in the crazy Canadian wilderness.
This music video for “Yelling in Sleep” by Rich Aucoin plays like cool video
game as one lumberjack connects with nature to defeat the alien bumblebee thing
wreaking hoc on the forest. Woodland animals assemble in Disney fashion as the
lumberjack develops superhuman strength by cranking out pancakes and fresh
maple syrup for the owls, deer, and bears. It’s a wild spoof on Canadiana. SC1
follows Lumberjacked nicely with a
fellow jaunt in the wilderness, The Divide (Brent Sievers, USA), and
equally fun and trippy farce on the limitations of man and nature.
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| Lumberjacked |
The highlight of the programme, however, comes in the animal
showcase, Monkey Love Experiment (Ainslie Henderson & Will Anderson,
UK), which screens second to last in Shorts Competition 1. Monkey Love Experiment is simply one of the best shorts of the
year. This funny, yet unexpectedly moving, short chronicles one monkey’s naïve
friendship with his fellow lab partner, which is a false monkey made out of
cloth, googly eyes, and a stick. The monkey watches space experiments in awe
from his cage and takes comfort in his friend—especially in the scent of the
face cloth—as he eagerly awaits his turn to be the next monkey in space. Monkey Love Experiment displays a
remarkable hand at humanizing the poor little critter as the lone monkey,
Gandhi, takes the viewer on a range of emotions including excitement, joy,
despair, loneliness, relief, and disappointment. Directors Ainslie Henderson
and Will Anderson pull off a notable coup by giving such tangible feelings to
Gandhi in this film that deftly blends live action and animation to blur the
line between forms and realities. Much like Gandhi sees the cloth as a monkey, Monkey Love Experiment gives life to the
inanimate and, in turn, renders human what is we perceive as inhuman.
Shorts Competition 1 screens again on Sunday, Sept. 21 at
11:00 am at The ByTowne.
Please visit www.animationfestival.ca
for more information on this year’s festival.
