Tag: shorts

Tallinn 2022 Kids Animation Programme – part 3

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

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Self-contained fable Birth Of The Oases (Marion Jamault, France, 9 mins) is a near-perfect portrayal of a symbiotic relationship. The cold-blooded hilltop snake struggles to keep warm while the two-humped camel is constantly exhausted by the desert’s heat. They come to a mutually helpful agreement whereby the cold snake takes up residence on the camel’s humps. This warms up the snake and cools down the camel. After the camel dies from old age, the snake moves around the sand dunes – here designed to look like a never ending series of camels humps – to create first water and later full blown oases which, according to the armadillo revealed as the narrator at the very end, to this very day.

In the black and white classroom of the black and white world of The Boy And The Elephant (Sonia Gerbeaud, France, 7 mins), black and white kids taunt someone who is different – a boy with an elephant head who is coloured blue. One kid, though, takes an interest – a boy who is coloured red, and the two embark on a playground friendship which could be read as a gay relationship, a state threatened by the red boy’s need to conform and revert to fit in with the black and whites. Eventually, a black and white girl takes pity on the elephant head, accepts him and he is subsumed into the group.

Marea (Guilia Martinelli, Switzerland, 5 mins) is another self-contained fable about a family living on an island within an hermetically sealed dome.

Stop-frame marvel Laika & Nemo (Jan Gaderman/Sebastian Gadow, Germany, 15 mins), arguably my favourite film in the programme, again concerns an outsider – a boy who lives in a lighthouse who is regularly tormented by fellow pupils and local fishermen at the harbour for wearing deep sea diving gear. When an astronaut crashes his spaceship near the lighthouse, the two helmet-wearers bond which puts them in a good place for when one of those local fishermen drops a key into the harbour.

Last but not least, The Queen Of The Foxes (Marina Rosset, Switzerland, 9 mins) is a French tale about the saddest member of a group of foxes who is, perhaps for that reason, made their queen. The other foxes’ inability to write hampers their attempts at writing such a letter to cheer her up. Instead, they steal from the nearby town all the love letters people have never been brave enough to send, delivering one which results in the uniting of a happy human couple who write their own letter to the fox queen thanking her for their efforts, which finally does the trick. The foxes then deliver the other letters, and the town windows suddenly become full of lively couples, straight, gay, even a threesome.

Which goes to show that programmes of kids animation can be a lot dirtier than you might expect.

The third of three programmes of Kids Animation shorts plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Tallinn 2022 Kids Animation Programme – part 2

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

One of two hungry mice becomes trapped inside a large, circular cheese in Mouse House (Timon Leder, Slovenia/Croatia, 9 mins) and is able to gorge himself inside while his companion struggles unsuccessfully, stomach rumbling, to transport the cheese. Meanwhile, a cat prowls around. The cat is peripheral: this is not so much a game of cat and mouse as of mouse and cheese.

The deceptively simple plot of The Turnip (Piret Sigus/Silja Saarepuu, Estonia, 7 mins) involves the planting and the subsequent, less than successful pulling up of that vegetable. The human villagers are represented, often as close ups of feet, in relief, cut-out animation, that is to say somewhere between 2D and 3D, a technique heightened in the lengthy sequences of centipedes and other bugs under the earth interacting with the turnip prior to its extraction.

The lively visuals of Away From Home (Brunella De Cola, Italy, 6 mins) convey the idea of Africans wanting it to snow in Africa.

Letters From The Edge Of The Forest (Jelena Droz, Croatia, 12 mins) adopts the time-worn setting of a bunch of forest animals to question such prevalent values as selfishness and greed. When a squirrel proposes to write a letter, a visit to local owl sees the latter make it very clear that he, and only he, can perform this service. But eventually, he is talked round to the idea that if he were able to help other animals write letters free of charge, it would be a good thing for everybody.

The anthropomorphised crocodile of Lost Brain (Isabelle Favez, Switzerland, 7 mins) gets ill and stays home after getting caught in the rain outside. Thus, her world is turned into black and white with areas covered by inkblots. Suddenly, she is no longer able to find the key to open her front door. After venturing into such curiously satisfying visual conceits as a lampshade becoming a toaster, a tear falls on a piano key and she starts to compose music, which turns out to be part of her route out of her predicament. She is later seen in a park where trees resemble musical notes.

The second of three programmes of Kids Animation shorts plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Tallinn 2022 Kids Animation Programme – part 1

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

QUICK SNAP: LIVE TALLINN

After her village is damaged by a huge, falling rock, and after being tucked into bed by her mum, Luce goes out and befriends the giant, sentient rock, the pair helping one another out of scrapes in a series of scenarios. The night scenes in Luce And The Rock (Britt Raes, Belgium/France/Netherlands, 13 mins) are stunningly designed in a palette of yellow (for the girl) and blue (for the rock). In the morning, however, other people are horrified to discover she’s befriended the monster until Luce demonstrates that the feared outsider may sometimes have something unexpected and valuable to contribute.

Giuseppe (Isabelle Favez, Switzerland, 26 mins) is a hedgehog whose favourite storybook concerns the Ghost Of Winter who carries off any hedgehogs foolish enough to be out and about in Winter rather than hibernating. However, his friends the rabbits tell him that Winter is the best season, so he resolves to see some of it for himself. This is a fiendishly clever script that plays on animal behaviour (hedgehogs hibernate) to talk about how society conditions children via half-truths.

I’m Not Afraid (Marita Mayer, Germany/Norway, 7 mins) explores brother and sister relationships as a boy plays at being a fearless tiger. His elder sister, however, would much rather talk about comics with her disabled friend, who gets around on crutches, and she tricks him into a game of hide and seek in an attempt for her and her friend to get some peace and quiet. It’s high on visual style and you can’t really imagine it having quite the same impact had it been made live action.

The first of three programmes of Kids Animation shorts plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival which runs from Friday, 11th November to Friday, 25th November. Watch a trailer for Luce and the Rock below:

The Mark Jenkin Collection

Posted on by victorfraga

If there’s one filmmaker that epitomises hope in the British film industry, look no further than Cornwall’s native son, Mark Jenkin. Last year, Jenkin’s theatrical debut, Bait, about the timeless conflict of incomers disrupting the austerity of Cornwall’s local fishing community, was heralded by critics and audiences before being awarded the Bafta for Best British Film. As the first-year anniversary of Bait’s theatrical release is set for August 30th, the BFI is releasing four of Jenkin’s short films on August 3rd on the BFI Player’s subscription service.

Like Bait, these short films were shot on 16mm Bolex clockwork cameras, hand-processed with coffee or Vitamin C extracts, and developed by Jenkin from his home studio. The series of shorts offer viewers a glimpse into the creative energy Jenkin has been churning out long-before being regarded as Britain’s most sought-after filmmaker.

Bronco’s House (2015), the first short in the series, is considered a blueprint for Bait. A succession of surreal images of cattle being born and the crashing of the waves along the rocky terrain off the Cornish coast primes the viewer in intense anticipation for the next 45 minutes. Bronco and his pregnant girlfriend are in search of a house to start their new family, but an emotionally distant landlord is holding Bronco back from starting a new chapter in his life. With a series of steely-eyed close-ups on bar patrons, fishermen, and tight-wadded proprietors, one is given the impression that they are watching a revived western in the same vein as Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western trilogy minus the gunfire.

Accentuated by the sounds of music artist Discrete Machines, Bronco’s House is a gripping story that sewed the seed for what Jenkin would accomplish with Bait. The stark and ominous aura of Bronco’s House bleeds into Jenkin’s 2019 s Hand, Cracked the Wind. An aspiring poet (Tamla Kari) stumbles across a writing case with her initials engraved on it only to find a poem written by the case’s previous owner. This 17-minute movie plays out like a modern-day version of Goethe’s Faust as the black and white photography leaves room to question whether ink or blood is being spilled on the page.

The Gothic horror of Hand, Cracked the Wind (2019) shifts in the short documentary David Bowie is Dead (2018). On January 11th, 2016 – one day after David Bowie’s shocking passing away – Jenkin took his camera around London filming the hustle and bustle of the city as he narrates entries from his diary. The short is a lovely homage to Bowie’s creative spirit. Jenkin’s unobtrusive camera and stream of consciousness narration resembles David Bowie’s character Thin White Duke’s cut-up method. This was inspired by one of his literary heroes, William S. Burroughs, giving the film a literary edge that would make Bowie and the beat writers smile from the great beyond.

Rounding up the series of shorts is Jenkin’s documentary Enough to Fill Up an Egg Cup (2016). When being interviewed by Mark Kermode at the BFI Southbank last year, Jenkin said that “the camera acts as a catalyst for everyone in the community to give their point of view.” Jenkin gives the Cornish fishing community a voice with the shots of seasoned fisherman looking out at the rising sea levels throughout Penberth entwined with sounds of wind rustling through the trees and striking images of the flowing waterways similar to images of Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).

With audio excerpts about the dangers of rising sea levels caused by Global Warming, Jenkin’s camera focuses on the expansiveness of the sea and the uncertainty of Cornwall’s future as Britain’s fishing epicentre. The final shot of three fishing boats sailing into unknown waters, coupled with the a capella folk music of a bygone era, is as moving as it is quintessentially British. The series of shorts from Mark Jenkin is proof-positive that his presence in British Cinema, along with his DIY-approach to directing, is as essential as it is inspiring.

The Mark Jenkin collection is available on BFI Player from Monday, August 3rd. Just click here for more information.