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| Migration. Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
Take, for example, the buoyantly original Migration (Fluorescent Hill, 6 min.) that opens the programme. This exciting animated work both references and parodies old-school nature flicks that many TIFF-goers probably watched in school. Fluorescent Hill, the animation duo of Mark Lomond and Johanne Ste-Marie, traces the migration pattern of made-up whale creatures that bob and flow like balloons in the air. The funny whale-like creatures that mission through Migration’s voyage are adorable inventions, and the clever animation deftly blends them into a natural landscape, so this amusingly fantastical journey plays itself out with mockumentary-like realism. The film adds to the aesthetic with a film stock that creates the effect of a vintage home-movie. Migration is a technical and creative marvel.
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| Me and My Moulton. Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
Another animated marvel comes to SCC 6 with Me
and My Moulton (13 min.) from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Torill
Kove (The Danish Poet). This playful
fable makes a nice contrast to the technically ambitious Migration as Kove favours a sparser and simpler storybook style.
The witty narration is fun and intimate as Me
and My Moulton voices a young girl’s farfetched concerns about the larger
implications of her dad’s bushy moustache. Kids will be kids, though, and the
colourful singsong cadence of Me and My
Moulton makes one feel like a kid again.
Family dysfunction continues with the quirky dramedy Godhead
(Connor Gaston, 11 min.). Godhead
sees a family divided by the loss of a mother heal thanks to the mystical
powers of her autistic son. This offbeat film, what with its sailor hats and
all, offers a helpful turning point in bringing the programme towards stranger
fare like Burnt Grass (Ray Wong, 11 min.). Burnt Grass joins a host of other doppelgänger pics in Short Cuts
Canada (see: Entangled, Still) that play on perception, reality,
and identity thanks to an unpredictable double. This stylish film spins a
peculiar love triangle as Sally (Alex Paxton-Beesley) takes her experiments too
far after she and her husband Jack (Christopher Jacot) discover a bizarre
portal in their backyard that multiplies organic life. Strong performances by
Paxton-Beesley and Jacot further the off-kilter tone of Burnt Grass to make it the best of the SCC films to play on double
trouble. Burnt Grass is an eerie
metaphysical drama and a sharp black comedy to boot.
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| The Underground. Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
Finally, the grand finale of Short Cuts Canada 6 is the
impressive The Underground (Michelle Latimer, 13 min.), which takes
inspiration from Rawi Hage’s acclaimed novel Cockroach and scurries in and out different worlds with a daring
originality of vision. The film follows a young Iranian man named Araz (Omar
Hady), who struggles with poverty and isolation in his new life in North
America. Araz fights haunting memories from the past and escapes his present
alienation by envisioning himself as a resilient cockroach that has the ability
to navigate the underworld and escape extermination. The Underground is inspired and visceral as Latimer creates some
powerful point-of-view sequences that envision the world from the cockroach’s
perspective as the camera goes low to the ground and hunkers down in the dirt.
The bravura cinematography by Guy Godfree creeps around familiar spaces, crawls
around refuse, and mimics the cockroaches frenzied survival tactics from a
unique perspective. The Underground
is a gripping first-person experience, open and tangibly symbolic, as the
magical realism of The Underground
envisions a familiar world anew. It’s one of the best shorts of the year.
Short Cuts Canada 6 screens:
-Thursday, Sept. 11 at 6:15 pm at
Scotiabank 3
-Friday, Sept. 12 at 2:45 pm at
Scotiabank 10
Please
visit www.tiff.net for more information on
this year’s Festival.
*Please note that Fire and Barnhouse, which screen in SCC 6, were not available for advance
screening.
