Empire (2005)

As we see the Statue of Liberty from the air, the voice of President George W. Bush speaks about a great people facing terror. Then there follows a montage of images of offices, homes, and back yards of the U.S. in the late 1950s and early 1960s: the colors of avocado green and harvest gold dominate. People, all of them white, are well dressed and well scrubbed; houses and offices well kept.



Archives images compiled by Edouard Salier demonstrate the blissful consumers of the standard American family, which become deformed by their transparent backdrops. Each image is criss-crossed by optical effects that magnify or obscure, and that invite sharper observation. Empire is remarkable for its integration of form, technique and content, deploying digital technologies with glacial precision in its exploration of the pervasive, unsettling realities of our times. Empire is a graphic illustration of the American way of life, and its warlike tendencies.

0055

By Momo.

Kleingeld (1999)

Herr Hoffman parks his late-model car in a lot across from his corner office on the top floor. Each day, he puts a coin in the cup of a beggar who stands in front of the building. One day, Hoffman looks out his window and notices the beggar washing his car. That evening, when he gives the beggar a coin, Hoffmann tells him not the wash it. But the next day, it happens again...

Kleingeld was inspired by The Philanthropist, a play which was performed in Berlin by a student theater group. In the play a character tells a story about something that happened to him, but in the film, it's a different character, it's a different setting.
Marc-Andreas Bochert makes a short which is exceptionally well thought through, visually.
The cinematic space that articulates this story is made up of a series of repetitions, this space is shown with many variations.
Marc-Andreas Bochert also worked very carefully with the music. These are the dynamics from which Kleingeld can profit.

We the Robots 2

We The Robots is a comic strip by animator and former syndicated cartoonist, Chris Harding. It is about robots.

Giocattoli futuristi (2005)

Futurists Toys is a grotesque tale that sparks a sense of loss and amazement in the viewer via a dreamlike vision. It’s inspired by Depero’s paintings and his “Balli Plastici,” the “futuristic theatre of marionettes”.



Claudio Castelli wants to wake sleepy consciences from their mechanicist torpor.
The story also touches issues raised by classic novels such as Dante's “Divine Commedy” and Manzoni's “The Betrothed” and wants to provoke thinking for young people ruled by routine.

Tokimeki

By Yuka Yamaguchi.

grant

2007 independent artist grant - saskatchewan arts board

Ballad of Mary Slade (Slamdance 2007)

Robin Fuller narrate a tale of passion, adultery and murder. The body of a young woman is slowly consumed by insects.



This is a gothic tragedy, told from an unusual point of view. The tragic story of her life and eventual demise slowly unfolds as the insects that consume her decaying body become actors in the fateful retelling of her downfall.

We the Robots 1

We The Robots is a comic strip by animator and former syndicated cartoonist, Chris Harding. It is about robots.

City Paradise (Ottawa 2005)

At first, Gaelle Denis depicts the metropolis as an intimidating presence.
When Tomoko, a young Japanese girl who comes to London to learn English, leaves her house, we discover a mysterious, secret underground city below London, a place that's colorful and friendly.



City Paradise was commissioned by Channel 4 as part of the MOMI Artist in Residence (AIR) animation scheme.
This animation is so richness for its color choice and its music. And there is also humor in the mockery of British life.
When animation is art ...

Reflection

This photo is part of a series shot at Nicholas Dattner's factory in Melbourne which produces furniture from recycled timbers. James McArdle was using a large format camera and tilting the focus plane to draw the viewer's attention here to the point of contact between the stacked chairs, giving the illusion of a mirrored surface, and the worker's eyeline.

One Weekend, A Month (Sundance 2005)

Meg's Monday morning routine is turned upside down when the phone rings. The caller delivers some news that turns her life, and lives of her children, upside down.
This is a tale of sacrifice, loss of faith, and redemption set in the land of diminishing returns



Eric Escobar choose to film the scene in basically the same area, the kitchen. The raw emotions portrayed by Renee O'Connor sensed her character's desperation but felt it as well.

Elmer

The trailer of comicbook Elmer.



Visit Jerry Alanguilan's website.

The Deadline (The Presentators 2004)

Three animators struggle to make a film as the deadline rapidly approaches.
If you ever lived through the creative crisis at the end of any group project will easily identify with the humour in The Deadline.



Stefan Marjoram designed this short to show how Aardman's stop motion heritage was not lost in the newly developed CG department. It is predominantly a lip-sync piece, it's funny and produces a laugh of recognition.
The Presentators are a series of one-minute, 3D, computer-animated shorts made for Nickelodeon.

Mind Trip

By Naoto Hattori.

This Is for Betsy Hall (Sundance 2000)

A daughter's personal story recounting her mother's lifelong battle with Bulimia.

An impressionistic montage of stills, projected video, underwater footage and an intimate phone conversation, this deeply personal film was crafted as a gift for the Hope Hall's mother.

Geek And Poke

by Oliver Widder. You can read other Geek and Poke stories on their website.

Agricultural Report (2004)

A new strain of a disease that could be dangerous to livestock herds is being discussed on the radio. A cow listening to the show naturally gets a bit worried about the topic.
This is why cows shouldn't listen to the radio. What's a cow to do? Why, freak out, of course.




Barley Films was founded in Ireland in 2002 to produce entertaining animated films. This is its second short and it has gone on to win ten international awards and has screened in over one hundred festivals.
Melina Sydney Padua makes a great work!

Beef

Ed Piskor has collaborated with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor. He and Mr. Pekar are currently wrapping up a graphic novel called "MACEDONIA" for Random House.

The Corporation (Sundance 2004)

The Corporation features interviews with prominent corporate critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Vandana Shiva and Howard Zinn as well as opinions from company CEOs such as Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company), the conservative viewpoints of Peter Drucker and Milton Friedman, and think tanks advocating free markets such as the Fraser Institute.



150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all-pervasive. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts, and possible futures of the modern business corporation.
You can buy The Corporation.

Subnormality

You can read other Winston Rowntree's comics on Virus Comix.

Metropopular (Sundance 2001)

Metropopular is an animated short film about what the cities of America would say to one another if they could talk. Jonah Hall use a unique animation style. The characters are great and the plot is fun.




Frantic about a popularity contest in which these cities are competing, they jockey for top position while arguing between themselves. Highlighting their separate personalities, each city had his or her own reason why they should be America's favorite city.

A really entertaining film.

Details

By Ye Rin Mok.

Born Into Brothels (2005 Accademy Award)

Amidst the apparent growing prosperity of India, there is a dark underbelly of poverty of another side of the nation that is little known. This film is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's efforts to show that world of Calcutta's red light district.
Briski, a documentary photographer, went to Kolkata to photograph prostitutes. While there, she befriended their children and offered to teach the children photography to reciprocate being allowed to photograph their mothers. The children were given cameras so they could learn photography and possibly improve their lives. Much of their work was used in the film, and the filmmakers recorded the classes as well as daily life in the red light district.




The red light district has existed for centuries and will exist for centuries more, but now we know the tortured lives of children in the shadows of Calcutta. The fate of the children is not resolved, but their dreams resonate in our world and lives.
The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee has criticized Briski for using hidden camera work to incorrectly present the children's parents as uncaring, for ignoring the prostitutes' substantial efforts to unite, and for harming the global movement for sex worker rights and dignity.
You can buy Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids.

The Bureaucrats

by Robert Renaud. You can read other The Bureaucrats' strips on their website.

Tenshi no Tamago (天使のたまご, 1984)

Angel's Egg incorporates surrealistic and existentialist qualities but very little dialogue, making it a commonly cited example of progressive anime.
The whole film is beautifully animated and designed. The atmosphere is dark: empty streets creates a dreamlike, slightly sinister atmosphere reminiscent of proto-surrealist painters Giorgio deChirico and Dalì. And there is plenty of symbolic Christian imagery: almost the story of Noah's ark takes up a good portion of the sparse dialogue. There are also references to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.



In a desolate and dark world full of shadows, lives one little girl: she is the sole protector of a very precious, large egg. A mysterious man enters her life and when he wins her trust, they begin to discuss about the world around them.
Each metaphor spoken and piece of symbolism shown only helps to further deepen the mystery behind the film.
You can read this article about its simbolism.

Children no more

Rocco Lombardi is the founder of some punk bands (I.A.S., Waika, R.aM.A., 'Sti Cazzi). He issued illustrations on Kerosene, Blu, Stripburger, Frigidaire and Lamette. He also issued L'albero Sfregiato.

Titler (Sundance 2000)

Filmed with effective black-and-white visuals and disintegrating locations of abandoned Met State hospital which evoke a bombed-out post-war Berlin, Gregory Roman energizes the screen with a performance of brilliant comedic nuances and mannerisms that evoke the lonesome glamour of Marlene Dietrich.
It's an entertaining, hilarious and shocking film.



This short performs eight numbers as Titler, a cross-dressing man with a woman's figure and the hair and mustache of the Fuhrer's. An absurd superimposition of two brands of charisma featuring Adolf Hitler!
What wonderful portrait of the Führer in drag belting out sexually reassigned show tunes!
Greg Roman has also created Titler web site that further evolves the character and tone established in the film.

Guest Comic From Adam Holwerda!

You can read A Slice of Life by Noel Graham.

Plasticland (Future Film Festival 2004)

The Setting:Night. Metropolis. Future?
A pocket full of money. When a tramp asks him for some money, a cat has to struggle with his many internal consciences to come up with a decision.



Simon Bogojevic-Narath has created a surprising and rich world in 3-D computer generated animation.

Batcha

Dice Tsutsumi worked for Blue Sky Studios as a visual development/color key artist on their blockbuster film projects such as Ice Age, Robots and upcoming Horton Hears A Who. Now he works as art director at Pixar Animation Studios.

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (Accademy Award 1989)

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam is a documentary based on the book which printed letters from the soldiers and nurses who served in Vietnam.
This movie is so powerful precisely because it is so simple. Using real letters written by US soldiers and archive footage, the film creates a highly personal experience of the Vietnam War.



An intensely moving and disturbing experience. It shows a more humane story of the war than we see in most media outlets and reveal real people in real situations trying to explain or understand the war.
It has no plot except of thousands of young men who went to a faraway country and had unspeakable experiences there; many of them died or were wounded for life in body or soul.
You can buy Dear America - Letters Home from Vietnam.

Making Biscuits (A Slice of Life 3)

You can read A Slice of Life by Noel Graham.

One Man Band (Annecy 2006)

Like many Pixar shorts, this film is completely free of dialogue, instead using music (played by the characters) and pantomime to tell the story.
Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews show us what Pixar can do with four minutes and the simplest of story lines. This short is fun because it's funny and imaginative.



With one coin to make a wish at the piazza fountain, One Man Band tells the humorously captivating tale of a peasant girl who encounters two competing street performers who'd prefer the coin find its way into their tip jars. As the two one-man bands' rivalry crescendos, the two overly eager musicians vie to win the little girl's attention.
You can buy Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1.

Key Lime Pie

By Trevor Jimenez

Visas and virtue (Academy Award 1998)

Inspired by the true story of a Holocaust rescuer, Visas and Virtue is a dramatic rencostruction that explores the moral and professional dilemmas that Japanese Consul General Chiune Sempo Sugihara faced in making a life or death decision: defy his own government's direct orders and risk his career by issuing lifesaving transit visas or obey orders and turn his back on humanity.



Although he is not as well known as Schindler, his heroic efforts resulted in one of the largest rescues of Jews during the Holocaust.
Chris Tashima shows us that it's possible narrate a true story without making a documentary.

Omlette Food (A Slice of Life 2)

You can read A Slice of Life by Noel Graham.

Ersatz (Academy Award 1961)

This short traces evidence of American cartoons, specifically from the UPA studios. Dusan Vukotic takes cues from modern art and graphic design. The animated figures consist of simple geometric shapes and most of their movements are either parallel to one of their edges or else curvilinear. Despite this minimalism, the characters are identifiable as characters, and within the boundaries of fable the story works just fine.



The Substitute was the first film produced outside the USA to win an Oscar for best animated short.
It's a simple story about the man who comes to the beach and uses inflatable objects for all of his needs.
You can buy The Best of Zagreb Film: Be Careful What You Wish For/The Classic Collection.

Transformationen

By Andrea Ren.

Dark Days (Sundance 2000)

This film follows a group of people living in an abandoned section of the New York City underground railway system, more precisely the area of the so called Freedom Tunnel. After living with them for a number of months, Marc Singer decided to create a documentary.
This is a noble film worthy of our attention.
He just started hanging out and making friends in his neighbourhood. He met one guy who mentioned the tunnels. He heard that you could build a house down there and live somewhat normally but still be homeless. And that just fascinated him so Singer went exploring.
There is some crime, but it’s not total anarchy. Boundaries are almost always respected, and there is a sense of uneasy camaraderie among these people.
Dark Days is an eye-opening experience that shatters the myths of homelessness by revealing a thriving community living in tunnels beneath New York City and honestly capturing their resilience and strength in their struggle to survive.




This documentary helps to change negative perceptions of the homeless. But Singer doesn't want the film to make us feel guilty that we are living comfortably while somebody else is on the street. Singer focuses on the positive things people try to do for themselves. And most importantly he gave every homeless person involved in its making a percentage. The only thing that stood in the way of Singer's idea and its execution was that he knew absolutely nothing about filmmaking, or even still photography
He assembled a group of the tunnel homeless to be his camera loaders, sound recorders, electricians and equipment manufacturers. Such a crew would add to the authentically personal feel of the film and solve the problem of finding a professional crew willing to endure tunnel conditions for that long.
Dark Days's urban wasteland aesthetic is sort of Lynchian in its ironic beauty.
This is unique among documentaries because of Singer's sensitive treatment. There are shots in Dark Days that rank with the best black-and-white photojournalism pieces of the '30s and '40s. Singer's attention to detail rightly deserved the Cinematography Award at Sundance
You can buy Dark Days.

Alien Weekend (A Slice of Life)

You can read A Slice of Life by Noel Graham.

Munro (Oscar 1961)

Tiny Munro, a four year old boy, is drafted into the army. Then his life profoundly changed.
Jules Feiffer's parable about the dangers of a mindless military mentality is accurately presented in this funny little film. Howard Morris narrates and voices the various grown-ups.



You can buy Rembrandt Films Greatest Hits.

You can visit Rembrandt Studio.

Don Carrascas

by Camilo Macheca.

Trevor (Oscar 1994)

This short is a tender and humorous tale of a gay teenager’s struggle with his sexual orientation and his attempted suicide.



Set as a sequence of diary entries, the film tells the story of bright, funny, and exuberant thirteen year old Trevor, who learns to deal with the fact that he is gay. He falls for another young boy, his friend, and his true feelings are revealed. He attempts suicide, but in the end his strong will and determination help him get through this tough time.



Peggy Rajski and Randy Stone created The Trevor Project, too.
You can buy Trevor.

Jane's World

In 2002 Paige Baddrock launched her own publishing company, Girl Twirl Comics, so that she could finally make her comic feature, Jane's World, available to comic shops and bookstores. Jane's World started as an online feature in the late 1990s, but was soon picked up for online distribution by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
In 2006 Jane's World received an Eisner Award nomination for best humor book. There are currently 8 Volumes of Jane's World in print.

You can buy Jane's World Volume 1, Jane's World Volume 2, Jane's World Volume 3, Jane's World Volume 4, Jane's World Volume 5, Jane's World Volume 6, Jane's World Volume 7 and Jane's World Volume 8.

Now Hear This (1962 Oscar nominee)

Now Hear This is without a doubt one of the weirder shorts that Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble ever made. This short is one of the Looney Tunes series produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc.
Looney Tunes is a variation on Silly Symphonies, the name of Walt Disney's concurrent series of music-based cartoon shorts. Looney Tunes originally showcased Warner-owned musical compositions through the adventures of cartoon characters.
This was the first Warner Bros cartoon to use the "modern" Looney Tunes opening and closing sequence featuring stylized animation.



An old man finds a red horn and uses it as a megaphone, unaware that it is really a lost horn from the Devil's forehead. The Britisher finds that the horn has the effect of amplifying every sound psychedelically and causing him serious bodily harm.
It's impressive how economically Chuck Jones packed in so much expression and character into so little. You'll enjoy his artistic style and abstract design!
You can buy Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection.

Arachne Elrafo

Raphael Lacoste did this painting for a project he has with Pascal Blanché: they are planning a remake of Time Masters, the 1979 French animation movie by René Laloux and Moebius. He has drawn the picture after the introduction shots of the movie where a rescue vehicle runs into the desert of Perdide, a lost planet colonized by the Time Masters...

Moving Still (2007)

This stereoscopic short film was made with an experimental tecnique: Santiago Caicedo de Roux created all the images in a single camera take and mixed them with CG images which build and destroy the city.



The routine of the daily train, with the same point of departure, same point of arrival, same route without surprise. You can feel feel the monotony of a recurring journey made too many times.
The images pass by outside and you follow the rhythm. Which rhythm do you choose? Are you free to change your life?

Not From Concetrate 5

Not From Concentrate runs daily in The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper of the University of Maryland, College Park.

It is created by Thomas Dobrosielski.

Precious Image (1986 Academy Award for Live Action Short Film)

Precious Images features approximately 470 half-second-long splices of classic movies and movie moments through the history of American film, chronologically arranged from The Great Train Robbery (1903) to Rocky IV (1985).



The scenes are organized by genre, which is matched to appropriate music. Chuck Workman chooses only about a second from each movie to push the audience into a kind of trance and take them on a journey into their individual memories of great films of three quarters of a century.
Workman wanted to evoke hundreds of fleeting memories in the viewers to look back on all the great films they have seen.

Making A Map

Wakaba Noda issued Making A Map and was awarded with a honorable mention award at Canon New Cosmos of Photography.

The Meatrix (Annecy 2004 Netsurfers Award for Short Films)

With this short, Free Range Studios wants to criticize the methods of industrial agriculture and to encourage consumers to purchase organic food products and free-range meats.
In early 2003, Free Range Graphics invited nonprofit groups around the country to submit proposals for their first-ever Free Range Flash Activism Grant. After reviewing 50 proposals, Free Range awarded the grant to the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE), an organization committed to halting factory farms and promoting sustainable agriculture. Their decision to spoof The Matrix was based on the similarities between the film and today’s corporate system of agriculture.



Leo, a pig on a seemingly bucolic family farm, is approached by Moopheus, an anthropomorphic bull. Moopheus shows Leo that the farm he has known is an illusion, and that he is really trapped in a horrific factory farm. Leo and Moopheus then work to break out of the Meatrix and help others do the same, with some help from a third character, Chickity..
In 2006, Free Range studios also released two sequels: The Meatrix II: Revolting and The Meatrix: II and 1/2.
The Meatrix will be the best parody flash animation with a political message you've ever watched!

Not From Concentrate 4

Not From Concentrate runs daily in The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper of the University of Maryland, College Park.

It is created by Thomas Dobrosielski.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

Meshes of the Afternoon is full of bizarre and creepy surrealist images. It's very poetic and disturbing. It reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience.
Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid wanted to put on film the feeling which a human being experiences about an incident, rather than to record the incident accurately.
This short is still one of the most popular of all American experimental films and is a landmark film that has provided an important model, setting the tone and style for other individual efforts over the next decade.
The entire film is seen through the eyes of a woman. You cannot tell when Maya's character is awake or dreaming. She carries a flower with her, which she holds upside down. She sees death, who wears a black hood and has a mirror for a face. She sees herself dreaming. In her dream she seems to foresee her own death. She seems to have a subconscious fear of knives, or being killed by a knife.



The film's narrative is circular and repeats a number of psychologically symbolic images, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper-like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean.
The film was produced in an environment of wartime volatility and this is reflected symbolically as throughout its mise-en-scène: the atmosphere is saturated in paranoia.
The beauty of this films is in its rhythmus: an innovative style of cutting on action, repetition and variation: a series of subtle structural, temporal, and logical mutations, creating a sublimely recursive, mind-bending meditation on the interaction between experience and memory, domestic banality and violence, imagination and causation.
You can buy Maya Deren: Experimental Films.

Cold Breath Finalsm

by Alec Senwald.

Sub (2000)

Sub is an exquisitely-timed, hysterically funny, stunningly expressive story of one sunny afternoon in a cool Italian plaza.
It's a strange short: a spare dialogue, a striking illustrative style and a decidedly red aesthetic. Someone will see in the short the decline of the Soviet Empire or a treatise on the vulgarization of mass culture and the decline of religiosity.



I'm not sure if it's simply a surreal short about the crew of a miniature submarine attempting to save their captain from being splattered about the ground of a European plaza but I'm sure this film will fascinate you for its inventiveness, its dynamic editing, its continual narrative surprises but most of all for its subversive humor.

Not From Concetrate 3

Not From Concentrate runs daily in The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper of the University of Maryland, College Park.

It is created by Thomas Dobrosielski.

Le Vieil Homme et la Mer (1999)

The old man and the sea, based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway, won many awards, including the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.



Aleksandr Petrov and his son Dmitri Petrov painted each of the 29,000+ frames. They took more than two years of painting on glass sheets. The project was initiated in 1995 after Petrov (who had made his first films in Russia) had his first meeting with Pascal Blais Studio, a Canadian animation studio. The film was partially funded by and was made at their studio. After photographing each frame painted on the glass sheets, which was four times larger than the usual A4-sized canvas, he had to slightly modify the painting for the next frame and so on.



The style is analogous to that used in Petrov's other films and can be characterized as a type of Romantic realism. People, animals and landscapes are painted and animated in a very realistic fashion but there are sections where Petrov attempts to visually show a character's inner thoughts and dreams.
You will be overwhelmed by its beauty and depth, and the admiration for what human imagination, creativity, and talent are capable of producing.
An astonishingly gorgeous example of a modern classic!

Garden

By Maki Fujimoto.

Kiwi (2006)

Kiwi was created by Dony Permedi, a student in the New York City School of Visual Arts, as his Master's Thesis Animation, with music composed and performed by Tim Cassell.
Originally the main character wad going to be a chicken but Permedi found it an obvious choice. So he created Kiwi.



The animator's story is that of a kiwi bird who has a dream (he aspires to fly) and is willing to do anything to see it become a reality.
This charming short is simple yet so powerful that it sticks in your subconscious.
A great example of a dialogue free narrative, which reminds me of the first shorts of Pixar!

Not From Concentrate 2

Not From Concentrate runs daily in The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper of the University of Maryland, College Park.

It is created by Thomas Dobrosielski.