Outstanding films from a diversity of countries highlight this year’s short film competition.
‘Animal Behaviour’ by David Fine and Alison Snowden.
There is the usual assortment of old and new in play in this year’s Annecy short film competition. Veteran animators Paul Bush (Ride), Riho Unt (Mary and the 7 Dwarfs), Gerd Gockell (Not My Type), and the French duo of Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioni (The Cat’s Regret) all have films competing this year. The competition also features the long-awaited return of David Fine and Alison Snowden, whose film Animal Behaviour (about an assortment of animals in group therapy) is the couple’s first short film since the 1994 Oscar winner, Bob’s Birthday.
Other highlights include new works from Vladimir Leschiov (Electrician’s Day), Marcus Armitage (That Yorkshire Sound), Patrick Bouchard (The Subject), Nikita Diakur (whose previous film Ugly won numerous prizes in 2017, including the Grand Prize at that year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival). Then there’s John Morena, a relative unknown on the animation circuit, who not only has an astonishing five films in competition, but actually made 52 short experimental films in 2017. Now, that’s productivity.
Beyond these films, there are a handful of shorts that ignited a wee gleam in my eye this year and should be -- pending the always unpredictable and occasionally mystifying tastes of juries -- collecting a few ribbons, coins and shiny trophies during the next couple of years at festivals.
I’m OK (Elizabeth Hobbs, Canada/UK)
Following the end of a fiery and passionate love affair with Alma Mahler (muse to many an artist of her time and the widow of composer Gustav Mahler), Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka enlists in the First World War. He suffers serious wounds in battle. As medics rush him through the forest of the Russian front, he encounters a fever of memories, emotions, daydreams and nightmares as he struggles to find himself and be, well, OK.
Highlighted by a lively operatic soundtrack and beautifully improvised images taken from ink drawings, I’m OK places us in a hazy, hurried, transient world that aptly mirrors the confusion and fragility of Kokoschka’s state of being. Inspired by Kokoschka’s art, the images act like faint memories as they struggle to take shape, find form and being -- before vanishing as rapidly as they appeared.
Tears of Chiwen (Sun Xun, China)
Though he’s better known as a painter and artist, Sun Xun’s animation work -- as vividly demonstrated in Tears of Chiwen -- is equally impressive. In discussing the genesis of the film, Sun Xun says that he started with two words: “tradition” and “mythic.” Chiwen is a mythological Chinese dragon that often appears as an architectural ornament. Placed on rooftops or elsewhere on buildings, it is believed, according to Feng Shui theory, to protect inhabitants against fire, flood and typhoon. Chiwen has also been described as “the dragon who likes to swallow things.”
Starting with a long tracking shot, Tears of Chiwen takes us through an assortment of Asian-inspired mythical imagery and landscapes before being interrupted by an Abraham Lincoln-like figure standing outside what appears to be a temple. Slowly but surely, images and icons from Western culture begin to subtly invade the screen.
Exquisitely animated, this beguiling work explores -- and laments -- the demise of Asian influence in the world, pushed aside by the often brash and facile voices of modern Western cultures that have infiltrated, effaced and increasingly silenced Asian traditions, and, with them, cultural and individual identities.
Cyclists (Veljko Popović, Croatia)
In a gorgeous Mediterranean seaside village, the final cycling race of the season is about to begin. The two top racers envision not just a championship, but an erotic payoff from a local paramour. As the race unfolds, the two rivals slip into sensual daydreams about their anticipated orgasmic payoff, unaware that the woman of their fantasies has other plans.
Inspired by the paintings of Croatian artist Vasko Lipovac, director Veljko Popović (Planemo [2016]) has created a quiet, old-school piece, marked by gentle comedy and erotic beauty. Of Lipovac he says, “He was an artist of the people, bridging that gap between high art and your local fisherman or port worker. He managed to create something that was poetic, complex and of high artistic value, but was at the same time accessible, funny and based on simple everyday moments.”
III, (Marta Pajek, Poland)
The much anticipated sequel to Pajek’s incredible Impossible Figures and Other Stories II (2016) is set in a similar dreamscape, but this time a middle-aged man and the female protagonist from Impossible Figures meet in some kind of waiting room. From there, they slowly begin to explore the floral garden landscapes of their bodies, organs and faces. Their reactions shift between pleasure and horror, gentleness and aggression, becoming increasingly more hostile as they continue their explorations.
Pajek, like Samuel Beckett, uses minimalist settings, sounds and designs to explore a complex bouquet of themes: unhealthy, stagnant relationships; the inevitable decay of the body; and the impossibility, no matter how hard we try, how deep we dive, of ever really knowing or reaching the core of another.
Mr. Deer (Mojtaba Mousavi, Iran)
Normally, animation films that borrow the often exhausted hallmarks and tropes of live-action works are tedious, leaving you wondering why on earth the artist used animation to begin with. Mr. Deer is different. Set on a subway car during an apparent global catastrophe, this riveting, tense and creepy work touches on class, race and ethics, depicting a disturbingly familiar world where people have become vile beasts with no sense of morality or compassion.
A Fly in the Restaurant (Xi Chen & Xu An, China)
This mesmerizing cut-out film from the unsung Chinese animator Xi Chen (The Swallow [2014], The Poem [2015]) and Xu An (who co-directed The Swallow ) is set in a local restaurant. Told from what seems to be the perspective of a rotating ceiling fan, the film follows the interior and exterior action as a cook chases a fly and a variety of patrons (soldiers, hunters, artists, men, women) mingle, sleep, eat and come and go. Along the wall of the restaurant is a slogan that translates as “Revolution is Not a Dinner Party.”
Mixing shades of red for the exteriors with dirtier, greyer interior colors (depicting a dreary daily existence), A Fly in the Restaurant is a not-so-subtle critique of a complacent populace ensconced in a Chinese landscape in constant political and social flux.
Ironically, the only character with any life and purpose seems to be the fly -- and everyone wants to kill it.
This article originally appeared in the Special Annecy 2018 Edition of ANIMATIONWorld Magazine.
A well-known figure in the world of independent animation, writer, author & curator Chris Robinson is the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
