International Animation Programme reviews
Review by on 22 Sep 2010
The fourth instalment of the Short Fusion programme showcased International Animation, and surely there can be no screening more diverse at the Festival.
LEBENSABER was the opener, a surge of primal energy in which a young girl looks into a red leaf and sees all of nature thumping through the membrane. A three-year labour of love for animator Angela Steffen, creativity has been matched by a care for detail resulting in something truly special.
THE POLISH LANGUAGE brought wordplay and literary allusion to the mix, a collaged visual poem in which a whimsical beginning left no-one ready for the powerful finale. Similarly unique was VOICE ON THE LINE, inventively recalling experiments in telephone surveillance by the American government. A dry voiceover becomes increasingly sexually charged, whilst a wallpaper aesthetic is punctured by images of lasciviousness.
MR. TETELIN, sombre in tone, with purposely ugly animation, was brutal in effect – a relief then that it was followed by the stop-motion THE MODELMAKER, possessed of low-fi charm and a fairy-tale finale. DIAMOND ACES, a local project, had a sketched-style of great character, but the story perhaps needed more exposition.
BARKING ISLAND (successful at Cannes) stole the show however. The story is one of human malice to animals, specifically the mass of stray dogs in 1910 Istanbul. Animated in a wash of bright watercolours, gaudy colourisation gives to Istanbul the same treatment Toulouse-Lautrec gave to Paris on canvas at the close of the nineteenth century – the effect masterful, and the highlight of the screening.
Oliver Ford
LEBENSABER was the opener, a surge of primal energy in which a young girl looks into a red leaf and sees all of nature thumping through the membrane. A three-year labour of love for animator Angela Steffen, creativity has been matched by a care for detail resulting in something truly special.
THE POLISH LANGUAGE brought wordplay and literary allusion to the mix, a collaged visual poem in which a whimsical beginning left no-one ready for the powerful finale. Similarly unique was VOICE ON THE LINE, inventively recalling experiments in telephone surveillance by the American government. A dry voiceover becomes increasingly sexually charged, whilst a wallpaper aesthetic is punctured by images of lasciviousness.
MR. TETELIN, sombre in tone, with purposely ugly animation, was brutal in effect – a relief then that it was followed by the stop-motion THE MODELMAKER, possessed of low-fi charm and a fairy-tale finale. DIAMOND ACES, a local project, had a sketched-style of great character, but the story perhaps needed more exposition.
BARKING ISLAND (successful at Cannes) stole the show however. The story is one of human malice to animals, specifically the mass of stray dogs in 1910 Istanbul. Animated in a wash of bright watercolours, gaudy colourisation gives to Istanbul the same treatment Toulouse-Lautrec gave to Paris on canvas at the close of the nineteenth century – the effect masterful, and the highlight of the screening.
Oliver Ford
Review by on 19 Sep 2010
Three very interesting ones, the rest pretty average
Film details
International Animation Programme
SHORTS
France/UK/USA/Ireland/Germany/Greece, 2009.
61 mins. English
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