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.

Bob Log III’s Electric Fence Story (2004), 2:25, directed by Stock ‘N Wolf (Tinka Stock and Sébastien Wolf). (Germany). Contact: Sébastien Wolf [E] sebastienwolf@gmx.de

El Doctor (2006), 23:00, directed by Suzan Pitt. (U.S.) Contact: Suzan Pitt [W] home.earthlink.net/~suzanpitt/

It Pains Me to Say This (2006), 9:45, directed by George Griffin. (U.S.) Contact: George Griffin [W] www.geogrif.com

Olis Chance (2005), 10:00, directed by Saschka Unseld and Johannes Weiland (German). Contact: Studio Soi [T] +49.7141.9743670 [W] www.studiosoi.de [E] contact@studiosoi.de

She She She She’s a Bombshell (2005), 7:37, directed by Ben Levin (U.S.). Contact: Ben Levin [W] www.benlevin.net [E] levin.ben@gmail.com

I’ll speak my mind, although It Pains Me To Say This. © George Griffin.

It Pains Me to Say This
George Griffin makes art. The QuickTime movie attached to this article is a small piece of it. See? Art. I respect that a lot. I, on the other hand, have no illusions about this thing I’m doing for you now. This isn’t Art, it’s creative accountancy at best. Animation is art — this is ready-reference. In general, in fact, I have very little patience for professional criticism. Movie critics are our cultural scapegoats, bravely enduring all those terrible, terrible films so that you don’t have to. They find fault for cash. I never put up with a critic with no sense of humor, and lately that criterion has sieved nearly everybody out of my media-mixing bowl.

Writer/actor/director Stephen Fry said of critics in the London Daily Telegraph 15 years ago that “no one would volunteer for this dreadful trade, but the kind of worthless and embittered offal we do, by and large, get.” Sadly the trend is consistent: too many critics are just assholes. Consider the tosser who recently called the new Pixar film Cars, a perfect if perfectly conventional comedy, “bland”: he/she/it also said in 2000 that Robert Altman “hasn’t made a decent movie since… The Long Goodbye“ and, in 1998, called A Bug’s Life a “high-tech bore.” Fortunately asshole critics are like potholes; once you spot them, they’re easy to avoid.

You know this already, of course, for you’ve been reading reviews for years — which means you also probably know the rule that when the reviewer begins by writing about something other than the matter at hand, the review is probably negative. Don’t jump to any hasty conclusions, though — I dig George Griffin a lot, even if I’m not in love with It Pains Me To Say This, his latest — I only opened with that sidebar because the short itself is so Meta in its self-critical approach that I had to follow suit. Griffin, he of the signature boxy-head single-stroke-eyes style of minimalism, is the creator of many comic and abstract shorts I hope you remember fondly, including It’s a So-So Life, A Little Routine and L’Age Door.

It Pains Me To Say This is both a work of art and a critique of it, which is always handy for deflating pretensions. First, the work: George Griffin creates a short animated film in which Ken and Celeste attend a reunion. Celeste reminds Ken of how he called her “cunt” at last year’s gathering. He evades the issue. She insists. He says he was drunk/said something else/is now in love with her. It escalates. He pulls his dick out. She pulls out a gun and mows him down. Then she puts on a nametag and looks for conversation elsewhere.

Here is the critique: Griffin continues his animated short by pulling back to reveal an audience that’s just finished watching the adventures of George and Celeste. The audience boos violently. Cut to a public-affairs TV show: a series of talking heads debate misogyny and gun culture. The show’s host declares Ken, the cartoon actor, a surrogate for the filmmaker, driving Ken to therapy. The therapist traces Ken’s problems to the film’s design — boxy and unrealistic. Ken’s wife Rachel puts him on trial for being a sexist pig. Ken moves on. The film ends with Ken and Rachel in bed — Ken shirtless with tufts of hair poking out beneath his arms as Rachel complains, “Were the hairy armpits really necessary?”

All very inside stuff — but beyond the fact that the voices and faces are probably all people Griffin knows, this is something that any artist pushing the envelope of acceptability can relate to. I’m sure Neil LaBute probably lived something hauntingly similar to this scenario. The voice acting isn’t extremely dynamic, but it’s honest. The digitally-manipulated traditional animation is rough-and-ready. And the opening and closing tune is by Joel Forrester, and I dearly love any opportunity to sample a new tune by a member of the late and lamented Microscopic Septet. Bearing in mind that rarely do we get a chance to see any short animator’s back catalogue, I’m pleased to report that Griffin has a DVD called Griffiti with 146 minutes of goodies from his filmography.