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.

This Month:

Bike Ride (2000), 6.5 min., directed by Tom Schroeder, USA. Info: Tom Schroeder. Email: tom.schroeder@pcae.k12.mn.us.

E=mc2 (2001), 8 min., directed by Alina Hiu-Fan Chau, USA/Hong Kong. Info: Alina Hiu-Fan Chau. Tel.: 310-592-6751. Email: alinac@ucla.edu.

Insect Poetry (2001), 6 min., directed by Marilyn Zornado, USA. Info: Sandi Serling, Serling & Associates, Inc., 14495 Fosberg Road, Lake Oswego, OR 97035-1813. Tel.: 503-697-0649. Fax: 503-697-3139. Email: sandis955@aol.com.

Lint People (2000), 7.5 min., directed by Helder K. Sun, USA. Info: Helder K. Sun/Umba Jumba, 1377 Lucile Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90026. Email: heldersun@hotmail.com.

Maaz (1999), 8 min., directed by Christian Volckman, France. Info: Atom Films, 815 Western Avenue, Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98104. Tel: 206-264-2735. Fax: 206-264-2742.

See visual jazz in Tom Schroeder's Bike Ride. Courtesy of Tom Schroeder.

If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view a clip from each film by simply clicking the image.

Bike Ride
This entertaining and wonderfully low-key film tells a simple, heartbreaking story: James Peterson rides his bike fifty miles to see his girlfriend, gets dumped, and rides home again. Conceived as an exercise in improvisation, Bike Ride sets the protagonist's first-person narration against an accompaniment by drummer Dave King and simple white-on-black drawings. Sometimes literal, sometimes ironically impressionistic, the images loosely follow the ebb and flow of Peterson's sad tale, combining with the other elements to create a jazz-like composition that's an apt vehicle for relating the spontaneous nature of the ill-fated journey. There are a few moments when the drumming overwhelms the narration, making it difficult to hear, but otherwise the conceit works extremely well.

It's not surprising that director Tom Schroeder lists legendary Canadian animator Norman McLaren among his influences, as Bike Ride is very reminiscent of the abstract, coolly witty work of McLaren, and other notable mid-century figures such as Saul Bass. For Bike Ride, Schroeder used ink and paper, which he scanned into Photoshop. The film was then assembled using Macromedia Director.

Schroeder lives in Minneapolis, where he teaches and makes independent films. Bike Ride has screened at numerous festivals and was named Best Animated Film at the 2001 Atlanta Film and Video Festival.