Every Tuesday, Chris Robinson screens and hastily responds to (relatively) new animation short films. Today's short is Unhappy Happy by Peter Millard.
Maybe he’s taking the piss out of Hertzfeldt’s trilogy, animation in general, or all of us. I’m not sure. I’m not even sure I care cause the dynamic sound, silence and timing in Millard’s mumbling absurdist chaos is unrivalled in animation.
In Unhappy Happy, I feel like I’ve drifted into the entrails of the Teletubbyland to find the colourful quartet bloated, damaged, and overtaken by an alien illness that has left them incoherent and discombobulated, swimming in disorientation and desperation, as they struggle inevitably towards their end and, mercifully, ours.
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.
