Judy and I saw this program of award-winning short animated films two and a half weeks ago and we liked it quite a bit. I'll go in order. 1. "Deconstruction Workers" by Kajsa Naess (6 min.) is in Norwegian with subtitles. It features two construction workers talking about mundane topics while everything around them is going to hell. They are photos superimposed on chaos which is mostly photo collages. Funny. 2. "Average 40 Matches" by Burkay Doğan and M. Şakir Arslan (3 min.) is from Turkey but there is no dialogue. Anthropomorphic matches are drawn to a cigarette, which eventually extinguishes them (oops! spoiler!). 3. "Bâmiyân" by Patrick Pleutin (14 min.) is from France but the dialogue is Persian and Chinese with English subtitles. It is by far the most beautiful of the lot with gorgeous brush strokes and collages. You can see it in its entirety here with German subtitles or here with an ad first and with French subtitles. If you are fluent in any or all of these languages go for it or just watch it for the visuals. 4. Our favorite, "Please Say Something" by David O’Reilly (10 min.) is officially from both Ireland and Germany. It's about a dysfunctional relationship between a workaholic mouse and his lover, who is a cat, set in the future, possibly 2106. The "dialogue" is in squeaks and meows with English subtitles. I particularly liked how each time the mouse takes a step it's a little click and the cat's steps are low and echoing. You're in luck because the whole thing is now online here. 5. "Flatlife" by Jonas Geirnaert from Belgium (11 min.) is also quite funny. There's no dialogue but plenty of sound effects in this story of 4 people in adjoining apartments. The whole thing is here. 6. "She Who Measures" by Veljko Popoviç from Croatia (7 min.) was our least favorite, consisting of strange humanoids walking through a desert picking up trash and putting it in their shopping carts and another humanoid trying to stop them. Judge for yourself here. Some have commented that it's an attack on consumerism. There's a little dialogue in English and some that's hard to make out. We thought it was American until we saw the credits. 7. "Home Road Movies" by Robert Bradbrook (12 min.) is from the United Kingdom and features in its stop motion photographs British actor Bill Paterson (lots of UK TV roles, small parts in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and Creation, and more). It's set in the 1950s and charming. 8. "The Tale of How" by The Blackheart Gang (4 min.) is in English from South Africa. It's sort of Monty Python-esque with faux dramatic operatic singing, serpents, gadgets, three-headed birds, and inventive images of the Indian Ocean. See for yourself. 9. "Never Like the First Time!" by Jonas Odell (15 min.) is in Swedish with English subtitles and is taken from first-person narratives about losings one's virginity. Can't say we loved it. It's not funny, not sexy, and at times it's disturbing. Though it's all animated by Odell, each segment has a different style of drawing. I've found it online with Russian subtitles and here are three of its segments with English subtitles.
From the group World According to Shorts, it's an impressive work, with some reservations, in limited release (go to the website and click Viewing to see if it's coming to a theatre near you). I believe there will be a DVD at some point.
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