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.

Rabbit (2005), 8:26, directed by Run Wrake (U.K.). Contact: Run Wrake, Sclah Films [E] info@runwrake.com [W] www.runwrake.com

The Bias and Sensitivity Review: Protecting the World from Assumption (2005), 7:00, directed by David Conlon (U.S.). Contact: David Conlon [T] 310.582.2276 [E] david@itl-work.com [W] www.itl-work.com

Generatio (Generation) (2006), 12:45, directed by Mait Laas (Estonia). Contact: Mait Laas [T/F] +372.6414.307 [E] nukufilm@nukufilm.ee [W] www.nukufilm.ee

Teddy (2005), 3:20, directed by André Bergs (Netherlands). Contact: Il Lustre Productions [T] +31.30.24.00768 [E] distribution@illuster.nl

Zero Degree (2005), 8:00, directed by Omid Khoshnazar (Iran). Contact: Omid Khoshnazar [E] Omid_khoshnazar@yahoo.com; info@iranfilmseller.com

Now we are six, and filthy rich: Iconography comes with a prize inside in Rabbit. © Run Wrake.

Rabbit
Rabbit runs across a field. Run Rabbit run. Above Rabbit floats the word “Rabbit” in a nice sans-serif. Float font float. In the field are also Fence, Sheep and Tree, all with floating labels attached. There is also Girl. Girl sees Rabbit. Up pops a thought balloon: Muff, made of rabbit hide. Mm, cozy muff. In Girl’s hand is Knife. She chases Rabbit. Chase, chase, chase.

Ahead of her, Boy is up in a tree. He helps Girl by jumping down onto the rabbit, killing it. Boy, Girl and Rabbit go inside a nearby house. Girl takes Knife and bisects Rabbit. BISECT! goes Knife. Out of Rabbit leaps Idol, an ankle-high humanoid creature with yellow skin and a voice like a baby dragon stuck in the stovepipe. Boy and Girl register their shock. Boy and Girl are even more shocked to see what Idol does to Fly and Wasp: Buzz, buzz, buzz go the insects and ZAP! goes Idol, throwing out little bolts of magic that split them apart.

As radioactivity breaks things down into different substances that aren’t necessarily on conceptual speaking terms, so do the magic bolts from Idol seem to break the ideal objects of this Platonic world into totally unrelated A and B concepts. When Idol zaps the insects, Boy and Girl are not so impressed with thing A — Feather or Ink Bottle is the result. Boy and Girl are more impressed with thing B. It’s a Jewel, sparkly and big as their fists.

Boy and Girl get a good idea. Tempting Idol with Jam, which Idol loves, they lure Idol outside and attempt to flood their little suburban environment with flies and wasps. BISECT! goes Knife through a Sheep. Sheep innards attract flies. Flies annoy Idol. Idol goes ZAP! again and again and again, and Girl and Boy clap hands and dance at their booty of jewels. The next morning they cart the feathers and ink to the local Store. They trade their goods for more Jam. Trade, trade, trade. Meanwhile Idol stays locked in the house, and, seeing another Rabbit outside, tries to lure it inside with Carrot.

When Idol catches Rabbit he goes ZAP! and Rabbit is reduced to wiggly squiggly globs of color flying around the room, which Idol jumps on and surfs for fun. Boy and Girl return and are annoyed that Idol is slacking off. But Idol just reassembles the wiggly squiggly blobs into Tiger and, winking, jumps back inside the host beast, which melts and shifts and becomes — Rabbit. And having un-magicked himself, the things he magicked around him begin un-magicking as well. Boy and Girl, sadly, have too much avarice on their minds to remember that storybook characters don’t want to be in the room when the carriage turns back into a pumpkin...

Rabbit is a juicy pin-the-tail-on-the-paradigm “I Can Read Book”/Brothers Grimm mash-up in CGI. The animation is some very accomplished digital cut-and-paste, with the source material being some post-war educational stickers that director Run Wrake found second-hand in a junk shop 20 years ago and only recently detourned for use in his short. I love how the Icon’s splitting apart of familiar objects mirrors the real-life journey of the stickers — in the 1950s they were meant to teach a small child to read, but probably never used; in the 1980s, they were a cool thing that an undergraduate art student collected; and in 2005 they became raw material in the work of an animator with 15 years of professional work behind him. Wrake, who is based in London, has done music videos for Gang of Four, Howie B and Manu Chao, as well as tour video elements for U2, and Rabbit was financed in part by Channel 4 for their Animate! scheme.