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.

At the Quinte Hotel (2005), 3:38, directed by Bruce Alcock (Canada). Contact Tina Oulette [T] 604.733.7475 [E] tina@globalmechanic.com

The Back Brace (2004), 6:00, directed by Carolyn London and Andy London (U.S.). Contact: London Squared Productions [T] 917.841.8527, 917.841.8507 [E] andy@londonsquared.net, carolyn@londonsquared.net [W] www.londonsquared.net

It's Like That (2003), 7:15, directed by Southern Ladies Animation Group (S.L.A.G.): Louise Craddock, Susan Earl, Sally Gross, Emma Kelly, Nicole McKinnon, Elizabeth McLennan, Sharon Parker, Sophie Raymond, Dell Stewart, Yuki Wada, Justine Wallace and Diana Ward (Australia). Contact: S.L.A.G. [F] +61.3.9481.3632 [E] slag_contact@hotmail.com

Jona/Tomberry (2005), 12:12, directed by Rosto (the Netherlands). Contact: Studio Rosto A.D. [E] info@jonatomberry.com [W] www.jonatomberrycom, www.rostoad.com

Overtime (2004), 4:55, directed by Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland and Damien Ferrié (France). Contact: Annabel Sebag, Premium Films [E] animation@premium-films.com

Blood, beer, and metonymy At the Quinte Hotel. © 2005 Bruce Alcock.

At the Quinte Hotel
Al Purdy was a beloved Canadian poet whose work was reminiscent of Charles Bukowski, and Bukowski and Purdy counted each other as friends during their lifetimes. Purdy died in 2000, leaving behind a bibliography of over 30 books of poetry. His signature poem At the Quinte Hotel is about a night in a tavern, full of drinking, brawling, and, unexpectedly for Purdy's captive audience, poems about flowers.

Purdy, captured in a 1968 live reading for CBC, is the soundtrack to a new animated short by Bruce Alcock, director for the Vancouver B.C. collective Global Mechanic. The piece is a whirlwind tour of figurative speech and blunt objects, both verbal and visual, and it's exhilarating:

After parsing the metaphoric ingredients of his beer to the unappreciative barkeep, the narrator witnesses a bar fight that blocks his way to the toilet, and when he tries to get by the belligerent party dares him to "Come On". "so I Come On/like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess," Purdy says, and he knocks the shit out of the little guy and sits on him while insisting "Would you believe I write poems?" A look of doubt passes on the face of his assailant, and among the other patrons of the bar. Purdy defies their disbelief and recites one.

"It was a heart-warming moment for Literature," Purdy notes, as they all cry and shake his hand. But when he tries to trade the poem for a free beer, he's refused. "[I]t was brought home to me in the tavern/that poems will not really buy beer or flowers/or a goddam thing," he notes, "and I was sad/for I am a sensitive man."

It is a heartwarming moment, and not a little hilarious, and maybe 50 proof poignant as well — all of it amplified by Alcock's exuberant animation. Alcock is a traditional and stop-motion animator who's directed a bevy of commercials you can download from the Global Mechanic web site. You can also see Wrong Number Phone Message, his 24-frames-of-delerium-per-second interpretation of an angry voicemail that ended up in his box by mistake. The 2002 short is two colorful and unhinged minutes inside the mind of one pissed-off Canadian who wants the powers that be to lay off his mother and stop taking stuff from his yard.

At the Quinte Hotel in Alcock's hands becomes a whirligig of bottle caps, paint splotches, real cut flowers, oils on paper, color reversals, cutup comic books, refracting glass, shadow play, and metal constructions with yellow and blue neon. It was shot on ones and edited with explosive vigor. It's incredible fun for the eyes and in its swift velocity is a perfect analogue for spoken poetry, a poem after all being a medium of extreme efficiency, sensation and simile and a life lesson folded into one compact phrase, the mess of life and language dry-cleaned to bare fibers.