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:

I Want a Dog (2003), 10:09, directed by Sheldon Cohen, Canada. Contact: Hélène Tanguay, National Film Board of Canada, 3155 Côte de Liesse, St. Laurent QC Canada H4N 2N4 [V] 514.283.1191 [F] 514.283.3211.

The Phantom Inventory (L’Inventaire fantôme) (2004), 9:44, directed by Les Armateurs, France. Contact: Didier Brunner [V] +33149290977 [E] lesarmateurs@lesarmateurs.com

Creature Comforts (2003), 120:00, directed by Richard Goleszowski, U.K. Contact: Sarah Hodson [E] sarah.hodson@aardman.com [W] www.ardman.com

Stars (Cochavim) (2003), 4:48, directed by Maya Weksler, Israel. Contact: Maya Weksler [E] maya_wl@yahoo.com

Concert for a Carrot Pie(2002), 11:37, directed by Janno Põldma and Heiki Ernits, Estonia. Contact: Kalev Tamm [E] kalev@joonisfilm.ee [W] www.joonisfilm.ee

I Want a Dog is visually a throwback to third grade school projects. Clip: © National Film Board of Canada, 2003, All rights reserved. Still: © 2003. Photograph courtesy of National Film Board of Canada.

I Want a Dog
I Want a Dog is a 2003 short from director Sheldon Cohen, director/animator of one of NFB’s — and Canada’s — best-loved shorts, The Sweater (1980), about a young hockey fan mortified that his worn-out hockey jersey has been replaced by mom with a brand-new sweater in the colors of his favorite team’s deadliest rivals. I Want a Dog marks Cohen’s second adaptation of a children’s book by author Dayal Kaur Khalsa, following his 1998 version of Khalsa’s book The Snow Cat.

Saturating the screen with the by-the-numbers hues of a 101-color paint set, Cohen retells Khalsa’s story of a young girl who wants a dog but meets considerable resistance from her responsibility-obsessed parents. We first meet her alone in her bedroom, as the girl conducts an imaginary chorus of sampled dogs barking Blue Danube until she loses her balance and knocks the needle off the record player. Her neighborhood, we quickly see, is overflowing with dogs, but there’s nothing canine in her house other than the collage of doggy pictures that completely covers her bedroom wall.

The girl tries various tactics to lure, smuggle, or otherwise convey a dog into the house; she leads a pack of dogs home with the smell of a sausage, insisting they just naturally like her, and even tries giving a pooch to her mother as a birthday surprise. In the end, though, it leads to nothing more than an earnest lecture about the multitudinous responsibilities involved in pet ownership. So the girl pushes her creativity to the limit and, in a burst of inspiration, ties an old roller skate to a leash and drags it with her everywhere. It never leaves her side, and at first her classmates jeer; but they can’t bring pets to school either, so soon the school is overflowing with kids trailing pet roller skates.

The no-nonsense color palette and primitive face and body characteristics are reminiscent of folk artist Howard Finster (best known for his cover art for Talking Heads’ Little Creatures LP). Mainly, though, I Want a Dog is a throwback to the after-lunch art projects we all did in third grade; its textures were even scanned directly from construction paper cutouts. It can be simple or remarkably sophisticated, alternating between action that looks like it was shot on threes and intricately observed character closeups done smoothly and gracefully on ones. The acting is terrific, and there are wonderful bits of business like a boy in glasses negotiating a leashed roller skate tangled around his leg. The droll narration is by Marnie McPhail, and guitarist Zander Ary writes and performs several enthusiastic doo-wop originals, sung by alt-country vocalist Neko Case.