Gogs.

Series
The dynamism of English broadcasters was as incredible as ever. Among the series honored at the festival, two were from programs destined for Britain's small screens. Gogs, by Deinol Morris and Michael Mort, which uses puppet and plasticine animation, is a prehistoric comedy in the slapstick spirit of naughty students and has an unbridled scatological tone, though perhaps too schematic to be fully effective.

One finds the same "taste" in Crapston Villas (another work in 3-D) by Sarah Ann Kennedy, a devastating soap opera parody, which offers a "hideous, dirty and nasty" vision of British society, which isn't reticent about neurotics, delinquents, depressives, vulgarians, or senile people. Even the small house cat is known to be depraved and suffering from an incurable digestive problem; the miniature sets, remarkably, do not omit any sordid details: traces of rust on the sinks, wallpaper peeling off because of humidity, endemic disorder, etc. The variety of characters and situations gives the show a certain political incorrectness, a comic strength and a provocative new life to each episode.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Tiger by An Vrombaut.

Computer Animation
For scheduling reasons, the `97 festival could not present, as it did before, a program from Imagina 97. But even so, the sessions dedicated to computer animation maintained their popularity. Their success testifies to the curiosity computer graphics continues to elicit. With several exceptions (including Toy Story, which was revived at the festival, Jerzy Kular's Krakken, the Insektors series . . .), we must admit that computer animation remains a subject in itself, and is thus not used enough as a full means of expression in the service of specific personal creations.

This opinion doesn't deny the convincing results created by these virtual images. But we can still ask oneself the following question: Beyond comedy, can the texture of computer images engender an emotional range equivalent to those produced by traditional means and allow it to have equal effectiveness in as many genres?

Nevertheless, the large selection shown at the Brussels Animation Festival did not elicit a definitive answer to this question.

--Translated from the French by Harvey Deneroff

P.S.: Although the Brussels Festival is a noncompetitive, it did award an audience prize, voted on by "special pass" holders based on viewing the short films in the international selection.The winner was Noël gourmand, a Belgian student film made at La Cambre by Corinne Kuyl. For the record, films that placed second through eighth were: Quest (Germany, Thomas Stellmach & Tyron Montgomery), Pas de Kadeaux pour Noël (France,Georges Lacroix), Estoria do Gato e da lua (The Tale of the Cat and the Moon) (Portugal, Pedro Serrazina), There is More Than One Way to Kill a Cat (United Kingdom,David Westland), Barflies by Greg Holfeld (Australia), Capriccio (Hollan, Ellen Meske), Bride of Resistor (USA, Mark Gustafson), and Bernol's Family (Belgium, Luc Otter).

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André Joassin is a Brussels-based journalist for Le Soir and Canal +.