Oct 4, 2016

Four Great Short Films from the Ottawa International Animation Festival

This year was a banner year for animated short films, and this year's Ottawa International Animation Festival showcased many of the year's best works. Below are four of my favorites from the festival, all of which are currently touring the international film festival circuit. I encourage you to visit a film festival near you.

A rare 15-minute abstract narrative that leaves you wanting more, Marta Pajek's Impossible Figures and Other Stories II is a gorgeous piece of hand-drawn animation. According to Pajek, the film is designed as a trilogy, of which this is the first.

The film's protagonist is a woman who trips and falls while running around her house. Upon getting up, she discovers that her house has unusual features: it is built with paradoxes, filled with illusions, and covered with patterns.

The surreal storyline is beautifully matched by a surreal cutout style that transposes uncomfortably familiar human features onto the badger. A trailer has not yet been released, but there is a Facebook page.

A badger gets stuck on a local road. A police patrol approaches its body in the dark. They soon realize that the animal is not dead, but that the badger has died of drunkenness! When the police try to drag the badger off the road, it wakes up and things take a strange turn.

Igor Kovalyov's psychological exploration of human nature, with a deft use of the language of Hollywood filmmaking, Before Love is one of his most artistically ambitious and beautiful films.

"Before Love" asks questions about loneliness, misunderstanding, and disunity in our lives. The title suggests that everything that is happening to the characters is not yet true love. Human shortcomings are the dramatic knot in the story. Everyone finds a way to be unhappy. Everyone is looking for love.

Dave Cooper's idiosyncratic style is not easy to adapt to animation, but "The Absence of Eddie Table" makes a valiant effort, creating a unique CG world that feels special, if not necessarily a one-to-one copy of Cooper's artwork The film is a very special, if not always one-to-one, copy of Cooper's artwork. [Lost in a dark forest, Eddie Table encounters a mysterious girl and a dangerous parasite. Based on the work of cartoonist and designer Dave Cooper, who also wrote the screenplay.