Encounters 20/20: Part One
Last week saw the twentieth edition of Bristol’s Encounters Festival, one that has taken several forms over the years as a local celebration of live-action and animation. Sometimes these two strands have run parallel, sometimes they’ve run separately, sometimes intertwined, sometimes split up; It’s essentially the Ross and Rachel of film festivals. For this anniversary edition it’s all been brought together again, with live-action screenings running alongside animation somewhat harmoniously at Bristol’s Watershed, a venue I’m a fond patron of so long as they remember that caramelized biscuit with my cappuccino. I mean, I know the biscuit isn’t on the menu and I should treat each occasion when it appears on my saucer as a pleasant surprise, one of life’s little gifts if you will, but after a certain number of years its presence has become integral to my routine; Without it I really do struggle to function.
That was a needlessly long tangent about a biscuit, just there. I should probably just delete it. No, no, it’s important. Best keep it in.
Nine (Dir. Chawalit Kaewmanee/Wanichaya Phraejunya)
Though most of the major events themselves were well attended, in years past the festival has seemed a lot more visible and present within Bristol. The minimalism of this edition’s branding when compared to the visual dynamism of prior editions, coupled with the scarcity of banners and posters throughout the city center seemed an odd choice of budgetary casualty given this year marked its 20th anniversary. Another victim of stripping-down were any repeat screenings for the competition programmes, presumably due to all of them now being presented at the Watershed as opposed to having the animation events play at the neighbouring Arnolfini. That being said, keeping things in one place does make it feel like a tighter, more unified festival and the lesser screening facilities of the Arnolfini (being more an art space than a cinema) oftentimes let the animation screenings down in the past.
In the lead-up to the festival proper were several events on Tuesday, including a talk by NFTS Director Nik Powell which proved enlightening as to the practicalities and realities of attending and what potential applicants might expect as far as selection, financial aid and course structure goes. Slightly disheartening was the chasmic disparity between the success rate (employment within industry after graduation) of live-action filmmaking students and animators, the latter not faring so well. Granted its low percentage is indeed proportionate to the entertainment industry itself, though seeing it in stark bar chart form proves a touch deflating. The presentation itself was strangely glorious, a cacophony of migraine-inducing colour schemes, clipart overlapping text and imagery rescaled to indecipherability; If it was tongue-in-cheek, it was perfectly observed and executed. If not, then it was the Powerpoint presentation equivalent of Tommy Wiseau’s film career. Our much-documented fondness for the NFTS remains well and truly intact, though its animation output seemed curiously under-represented this year.
Coda (Dir. Alan Holly)
Following a typically sardonic (though significantly cheerier than expected) Desert Island Flicks with this year’s guest Will Self – in which he wrote film critics such as myself off as voyeuristic perverts with what can only be described as astounding accuracy – the competition screenings began on Wednesday. One of the strongest shorts of the entire festival kicks off proceedings, in the form of Alan Holly’s wonderful Coda, a film that starts off with grim humour (best animated faceplant death ever) and ends with life-affirming poignancy. The multitude of gorgeously rendered environments is astonishing, and special mention should also be made of the voice acting which adds tremendous humanity to both the man pleading for more reminders of the life he’s departing and the angel of death ushering him onto whatever lies ahead. Stephen McNally’s similarly ethereal film Forgot serves as a fairly appropriate companion piece, a short that focuses on what is lost rather than what is remembered. In the case of both films, the purposefully undetailed (and superbly animated) characters make a strong visual impact.
Tomek Ducki’s Baths is an interesting look at the duality of self, wherein two swimmers in the autumn of their years recall their youth via a rather ingenious visual motif. Films with strong visual charm included Jakub Kouřil’s Little Cousteau, a lighter offering with a contemporary children’s illustration look to it, as well as Mirai Mizue’s typically kaleidoscopic Poker. Chawalit Kaewmanee and Wanichaya Phraejunya’s Nine is another noteworthy short for its fusion of Eastern and Western animation styles, starting off syrupey and incrementally growing darker as it goes. Another visually striking piece of work is Shelley Nicholls’s Dinner Is Served, which boasts strong, fluid and resonant animation detailing the processes of animal butchery. I’ll never be the type of fella all that receptive to its message (it kind of gave me a hankering for a Full English) though it’s impressive all the same. While Chadwick Whitehead’s Fallt breaks no boundaries on a technical level, it is a perfect example of that not being a requirement of a strong film; A tale of frivolous litigation, it’s short, sweet and clever, winning over the audience in its mere two-minute lifespan.
Things Don’t Fit (Dir. Tim Divall)
Other strong films dotted throughout the first two screenings are Skwigly favourites such as Timber (Nils Hedinger), Spectators (Ross Hogg) and Ab Ovo (Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi). A personal highlight, in the sense that it perfectly lines up with my own preferences for casually unsettling humour, was Tim Divall’s Things Don’t Fit. Claustrophobic and tense, the film also manages to be strangely endearing and chucklesome despite the grotesquerie of its characters and unearthly style of movement. It’s the second of three strong RCA contributions, the first being the aforementioned Forgot with the third being Luiz Stockler’s wonderful catalogue of musings and fears Montenegro.
For the first day there are few programming complaints save for the curious decision to close out the second competition screening with Maja Lindström’s 00-Tal Barn. An imagined future conversation with her now-infant son (so, essentially, a conversation with herself), its cautionary message of the dangers of oil dependency and impending financial apocalypse is, while laudable, sort of done to death at this point, either less indulgently or with the saving grace of the odd zombie attack. It largely resembles a video game cinematic, and at 25 minutes long in its rendering time alone it probably contributed a dent or two toward the very environmental destruction it prophesies.
Keep your eyes on Skwigly throughout the week as we bring you more on the films and events of this year’s festival.