Within the world of animation, most experimentation occurs within short format productions, whether they are high-budgeted commercials, low-budgeted independent shorts or something in between. The growing number of short film festivals around the world attest to the vitality of these works, but there are few other venues for exhibition of them or even written reviews. As a result, distribution tends to be difficult and irregular. On a regular basis, Animation World Magazine will highlight some of the most interesting with short, descriptive overviews.

If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view a clip from each film by simply clicking the image.

Bar Fight (2001), 4:00, directed by Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick (U.S.). Contact: Christy Karacas [T] 347.256.9560, Stephen Warbrick [T] 917.379.7266 [W] www.barfightfilms.com

Come On Strange (2005), 3:30, directed by Gabriela Gruber (Germany). Contact: Gabriela Gruber [T] +49.30.805.75276 [E] gabrielagruber@web.de

Jam Session (2005), 9:30, directed by Izabela Plucinska (Poland). Contact: [W] www.izaplucinska.com

A Fish with a Smile (Wei Xiao Der Yu) (2005), 9:40, directed by C. Jay Shih (Taiwan). Contact: Patrick Mao Huang, Flash Forward Entertainment [T] +886.2.2926.2839, ext 11 [E] patrick@ffe.com.tw

Le Couloir (The Corridor) (2005), 17:18, directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol (France). Contact: Folimage [T] +33.4.75.78.48.68 [E] folimage@wanadoo.fr [W] ww.folimage.fr

Beers, balls, bashed heads, Bar Fight! © Stephen Warbrick and Christy Karacas.

Bar Fight
If Bar Fight were a drink, the recipe would go this way: To one pint Pabst Blue Ribbon, add six Vivarin, two drops Uranium 238 and a corkscrew. Gargle all to the tune of “Muleskinner Blues.” Meanwhile the animated short of the same name is a thing of beautiful simplicity, promising and delivering in four excruciatingly funny minutes exactly what the title promises: this recipe calls for a watering hole, some guys, miscellaneous furniture and 80 quarts testosterone.

There’s a bar, there’s country music on the jukebox, and the usual crowd is hanging out after hours — shooting pool, playing videogames, working on a pitcher around a dirty table. They’re lean, mean, hard-drinkin,’ chopper-ridin’ American dudes after dark. Then someone comes in, sits down at the bar and leans just a little too hard on his neighbor’s beer bottle. It tips. There is spillage. There is growling. There is a thrown punch.

What follows is what will, in years to come, be seen in the video dictionary under “Hyperbole”: 240 seconds of goofball stream-of-consciousness ultra-violence involving severed limbs, guys impaled on pool cues, a dwarf with a broken bottle, a giant that bursts out of the floor and bites people’s heads off, broken teeth and minor bruises. There is also a wonderfully incongruous bathroom interlude wherein a mullet-headed blonde dude takes a peaceful piss, dimly registers a scrawled slogan on the wall, listens to the Carpenters, washes up with a smattering of pink granulated soap, slicks back his hair, salutes his smiling reflection and finally returns to the battle outside and is instantly killed.

It’s quick, it’s loud, it’s brilliantly timed and it’s got screamin’ guitar rawk for a soundtrack. The animation is traditional, and both the style and goofy tone reminded me of Magnus Carlsson’s Robin & Ben shorts for MTV — there’s the same slightly awkward line style and surreal approach to cartoon gore. Plus there are aliens. Bar Fight is a product of the similarly MTV-weaned minds of Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick, right-coasters and veterans of Beavis and Butt-head and other less-adolescent-than-you-might-think animated fare. They finished the short in 2001, but claim it’s been rejected by every festival in which it’s ever been entered (until, finally, this year’s Tribeca festival in New York), so if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve got a good excuse.