Cinanima 96 concluded on November 10. It celebrated 20 years of bringing animation to this small seaside town in Portugal. In just 5 days the Festival showed why this form of cinema remains the freest, the funniest and the most touching, able to explore areas that real life action cannot reach.

Here are some highlights and lowlights, in my opinion, for those who weren't able to enjoy the screenings that took place within the sound of the Atlantic pounding the beach only a few hundred yards away. Rather than day by day, it seemed a good idea to present the films by country.

Tight Little Island
England, England, what has Maggy Thatcher done to your youth? The Royal Schools of Art in particular seem to have been affected and depressed during the reign of the iron lady. Button by Alan Highfield and Daniel Walls was a grim parable set in a forlorn lighthouse in which a husband destroys any child his lonely wife manages to create, even if it is made of rags and has a button for an eye. Crapston Villas by Sarah Ann Kennedy is a savage portrait of city people who seek some form of love and find only derision and ugliness. The characters have energy enough but lack hope; none of them would you like want to cuddle up to.

Films like The Lacemaker by Lizzie Oxby and Touchwood by Vivienne Jones, as well as Asperger and Proud by Molly O`Nell dwell on human psychology, obsessions and death using excellent skill but in a less than happy vein. Nick Park with his Close Shave proved that there is still some humor and compassion left for human beings, men, women and dogs, no matter how unglamorous they may be.

The United States showed a certain amount of extremism too. For sheer wanton ugliness it would be hard to beat The Lizard Whomper by Tennessee Red Norton, where a repulsive man dispatches lizards in the most revolting, raw meat and bloody chunk manner imaginable. He gets his comeuppance but it is hard to care one way or another. All this in 2 minutes and 14 seconds.

So it was nice to see the Chicken From Outer Space by John Dilworth continue on its wacky way to spoof the menaces from out there with its unlikely hero, the Cowardly Dog, to defend Mom and the lonely Kansas homestead.

Ah, the Russians! They surprise you as they go from the gloom of Dostoyevsky in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Alexander Petrov (not in competition) to the puckish fantasies of Puss in Boots by Gary Bardin. Both films are about dreams, one of madness and resurrection, the other about poor men drenched in vodka who wreck any form of happiness when they find it. The young hero goes to the court of a French king, meets elegance and admiration, even love, before losing everything. The cat himself, with his Americanisms in deep Volga accents, is worth meeting and having for a friend.

How short can sweet be? Home Sweet Home by Vitaly Bakunovich and Rudan Sirachor from Belorussia, lasts only five minutes to prove that there is no place like home, even if home is a dented empty beer can. The hero, an adventurous bug, finds this out the hard way.