Annecy 2013: Films in Competition 1
Has it really been a year? This is the conversation on the lips of just about everyone as you all frantically heck your calendars to make sure that you have not been blasted through a wormhole in time and space to one of the animation highlights of the year – Annecy 2013. It certainly feel like only yesterday we were admiring films such as Tram, Oh Willy and Longbird. Annecy really feels like the beginning of a new animation calendar, a new year for animation.
As with previous years we will take a look at one of the hottest contesters of the festival, the short films in competition category to see what the future of animation looks like. Prepare yourselves for temporal displacement.
Double Fikret
Haiyang Wang – China
Created using chalk and set in a narrative-less word where the peculiar visual imagery is often funny, occasionally sexual and always pretty damn weird. The morphing images and tangible setting between two artists pieces of paper on a studio wall put you in mind of Bill Plymptons Your Face and anything by BLU with a hint of Salvador Dali. Whilst some narrative-less films can have trouble with pacing this film did not suffer from that, a very enjoyable watch.
Double Fikret
Resistant Soul
Simone Massi – Italy
Thick heavy pencil lines with occasional avian based flashes of red populate this film which is to be commended for its camera work as you voyage through a broken and bleak landscape with no real focus. Although the opening and ending had title card written introductions explaining the story it was although they were not tied to the film, maybe I am not clever enough for it but I found it rather baffling.
The Banquet of the Concubine
Hefang Wei – France/Canada/Switzerland
What instantly strikes you about this film is the excellent design. At first you are introduced to an ancient setting and art style that is somewhat familiar, in this case ancient Chinese paintings, but the character designs are entirely different so the director has greater freedom with the story whilst still retaining a recognisable quality that supports the mood of the piece. Although our screening was presented in one foreign language and subtitled in another, the story was clear enough to follow without being too obvious or cliché. A tale of jealousy, misplaced pride and bitterness for all to savour.
The Banquet of the Concubine
Feral
Daniel Sousa – USA
This film begins in the wilderness as a violent wolf pack face off with a young feral child. The child is rescued and introduced back to civilisation. The town builds itself as the boy encounters it for the first time as shapes come together to form houses, roads and people which communicates the idea that a town can be an alien envioronment to one first encountering it perfectly. Although he is washed and clothed he struggles to adjust, reverting to his animalistic nature to defend himself from his new unnatural surroundings. The muted colours and flat silhouettes fit the tone of this short very well.
Scroogin on a Greg
Will Anderson – UK
A welcome relief from what had been a rather dramatic opening few films, Will Andersons shorts never fail to amuse. It is the frantic and snappy dialogue that carries this extremely short film about a pigeon forcing another to smoke. Short, hilarious and addictive.
Astigmatismo
Nicolai Troshinsky – Spain
As this film focuses on a child loosing his glasses it seems only fair that the film should be disorientating and the style as well as the imagery is as confused as the poor child. The music is excellently placed in this short that explored a bizarre and blurry world.
Futon
Yoriko Mizushiri – Japan
Set in a pastel dreamy world, nothing is quite solid as shapes slowly blend an morph, this was perfectly set against its plodding soundtrack and didn’t overstay its welcome.
Black
Walter Hoyos – Argentina
The technique used to create this film fits the tone perfectly as we take a whistlestop tour through all the clichés of film noir. Detectives, dames, double deals and corruption coming right from the top populate this tongue in cheek take on the genre.
Railway Watchman
Piotr Szcepanowicz – Poland
You can’t help but feel sorry for this chap, all alone in his stationbox, but the pace and the animation make it hard to decifer wether or not he is actually happy with his life or wether he would actually have preferred to ride off into the sunset with the pretty girl who tries to get his attention.
Wind of Share
Pierre Mousquet, Jerome Cauwe – Belgium/France
A tough nut strolls into a filthy town and unleashes justice just for the sake of it. Bright, ballsy and full of hilarious action, larger than life characters and NSFW chuckles.
Wind of Share
Lonely Bones*
Rosto – Netherlands
Of all the films in the selection this seemed to divide opinion. The story itself is set in a surreal, unrelenting nightmare and is charged by an energetic soundtrack.
Chopper*
Lars Damoiseaux, Frederik Palmaers – Netherlands
The circle of life. Sort of. This film combines live action with CGI elements to tell its tale.
(*Cheers Ben)
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