Within the world of animation, most experimentation occurs within short format productions, whether they be 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.

This Month:

Fragile (2003), directed by David Cumbo, U.S.A., produced by Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Contact: David Cumbo [E] dcumbo@hotmail.com.

Cats (2003), directed by Chris Choy, U.S.A., produced by California Institute of the Arts. Contact: Chris Choy [T] 909.981.7723; [E] chrischoy123@yahoo.com.

The Box Man (2002), directed by Nirvan Mullick, U.S.A., produced by California Institute of the Arts. Contact: Nirvan Mullick [W] www.nirvan.com.

Going Up? (2004), directed by Marci Ellis, produced by Ringling School of Art and Design, Computer Animation Department. Contact: Marci Ellis [E] mellis@Ringling.edu; mellis.alumni@Ringling.edu.

Tales of Mere Existence (2003), directed by Lev Yilmaz. Contact: Lev Yilmaz [E] illeverent@yahoo.com, [W] www.ingredientx.com.

A toddler confronts the boogeyman in Fragile. © David M. Cumbo.

Fragile
People who have lost track of their own sense of surrealism would do well to watch small children at play, and ruminate on days past when upturned dirt in the bottom of an irrigation ditch could become giant brown anvil clouds blown by atmospheric winds, a few square yards of sand could be the Sahara, and the iris patch could be Amazonia. The adult imagination dulls for the simple reason that most of us don't need to think up wild new aspects of Earthly possibility; we've had years of experience of The Real Thing, or at least the edited-for-television version. But the mature mind scores over the very young mind inasmuch as experience creates an emotional cushion against life's travails. The wrecked car that once precipitated cries of “I'm running away before Dad kills me” in time will evoke only “Oh well, find a phone and we'll call State Farm.”

David Cumbo's CGI short Fragile looks at the aftermath of a traumatic event from the point of view of a small child, his imagination utterly unprepared for the landscape of grief thrust on him by the death of his older brother. The piece takes place in the gauzy late-afternoon naptime world of a preschooler's bedroom, furnished minimally with two beds and two rows of animal masks on opposite walls. The child wakes and gazes at the other bed, which is unoccupied, and he enters a vision of playing with his brother. Each dons a mask and enters the universe it implies - eagle masks lead to high flight, horse masks to a steeplechase and merry-go-round. But shortly the younger child finds himself alone in a dark room, and Death, with its own mask, enters his nightmare.

Fragile can be really lachrymose — the characters always do the crying when they should be making us do it for them — but that nightmare is the film's kicker: a toddler confronting the Bogeyman in the form of another toddler. Decked out in a fanged fright mask and black as a broken pencil lead, this child-size evil is Nightmare One, our species' inherited archetype for The Things That Pounce. It's also an apt rendering of the interior life of a child who's suffered a terrible tragedy and doesn't have the emotional tools to map the terrain. In a way this dream sequence is as frightening in its implications as in its execution; whereas an adult could at least recognize the dozen shades of fear, anger and sadness that make up grief, for this boy his brother's death can find expression only in the form of one terrible Boo.

David Cumbo made Fragile as a third-year project at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. It plays beautifully on the screen, if its characters do tend to move in ways that don't quite match their weight. Unfortunately it may never find commercial distribution, because Cumbo took as his inspiration Eric Serra's quietly impassioned score to Luc Besson's Joan of Arc biopic The Messenger. (It's the only soundtrack to this wordless short, and rights issues unfortunately prohibit us from including it here.) Perhaps a friendly nod from the composer and his publishers will allow the music cues to be cleared, and Fragile can find a larger audience on home video.