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.

Tower Bawher (2005), 3:46, directed by Theodore Ushev (Canada). Contact: NFB [T] 800.27.7710 (Canada distribution), 800.542.2164 (U.S. distribution), 514.283.9450 (International distribution) [E] international@nfb.ca[W] www.nfb.ca

Beatgirl -- A Piece of Action! (2006), 2:22 directed by Martin Leeper (U.S). Contact: Martin Leeper [T] 818.985.7340 [E] odetopoe@pacbell.net

Life in Transition (2005), 4:00 directed by John Dilworth (U.S.). Contact: John R. Dilworth, Stretch Films, Inc. 6 West 18th St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10011 [T] 212.691.9969 [E] info@stretchfilms.com

Backyard Shadow (2005), 3:52, directed by Karl Staven (U.S.). Contact: Karl Staven [T] 215.717.6552 [E] karlstaven@hotmail.com [W] www.karlstaven.com

My Life at 40 (2005), 7:40, directed by Laurie Hill (U.K.). Contact: Laurie Hill [E] lauriehi2@yahoo.co.uk, Royal College of Art [T] +44207.590.4512 [E] animation@rca.ac.uk [T] +44.207.590.4512

The edifice is glorious but structurally unsound in Tower Bawher. © 2005 National Film Board of Canada.

Tower Bawher Tower Bawher is every 1920s-era Soviet Constructivist graphic artist’s fever dream in motion, and maybe the most driven piece of short animation ever made. This beautiful, defiant and fascinating film can’t even slow to a jog for its own opening and closing credits, so urgent is its determination to burst into existence, build itself up, knock itself down, and sweep the evidence quickly out of sight.

Taking all the visual tropes of Constructivist design familiar to fans of poster designers the Stenberg Brothers -- including solid-limbed human icons, telescoping tubes with airbrushed shadows, text revolving in circles, tall buildings converging in space from all sides and a muted color scheme of reds and browns as if all the world was built of Kraft paper -- Tower Bawher beats out a mean visual pace. It races to its own destruction as imaginary structures are grown and thrown across the screen over four minutes (that’s as long as it lasts, but your soul will feel a few hours older by the time it’s done). Everything is movement, motion in a pool of filmic potential energy where stasis would be a kind of death; and the locomotive force of Georgi Sviridov’s music could be the engine or the caboose, propelling the animation or just offering a stunned musical reflection of the visuals.

The tower that Tower builds falls down at the end: a statement that depending on your frame of mind could be a dig against Capitalism, Communism, current trends in music video or just too many parking tickets. But it’s efficient and wonderful and wondrous in its efficiency, and in its ambiguity opens itself up as an all-purpose chunk of dramatic irony that any viewer can apply to his or her own personal dramatis personae. The short comes from NFB and the mind of director Theodore Ushev, a Bulgarian ex-pat now working in the milieu of 2D digital film design.