Sisyphus (1974)

Sisyphus is an artistically spare depiction of the Greek myth of Sysiphus, sentenced to eternally roll a stone up a mountain. The story is presented in a single, unbroken shot, consisting of a dynamic line drawing of Sysiphus, the stone, and the mountainside.
This short is about political oppression. The futile efforts of trying to create personal works of art are reflected in Sisyphus's unending struggle, with a cold, oppressive force trying to prevent the hero from doing what he has to do.
With only black lines and empty white space, Marcell Jankovics is still able to make us aware of the incredible strength of Sisyphus, and the tremendous weight of the rock. As the rock grows in size, and Sisyphus, despite his ample musculature, shrinks, we truly feel the frustration and pain of the title character.



He pulls back, and for a split second, becomes nothing more than a squiggle of lines. He comes rocketing back, once again his old muscular self for just a brief moment, and shoves the rock on to its final resting-place on the top of the mountain.
By having Sisyphus melt into the mountain, Jankovics is able to show us the exhaustion and frustration of the title character.
The pain is also reflected in the stunning sound track. Gasps and grunts. As the boulder gets bigger, the gasps turn into screams.

In The Zone

Rip's illustrations have appeared in Galleries and on CD's, Band Poster's, Newspapers and Magazines. Robert's style is whimsical, surreal, and his images tend to capture a specific moment or scene while keeping an underlying edge.

The Selfish Giant (1973)

The story's namesake giant erects a wall to keep children out of his garden, reaping the consequences of a continuous winter.



The story is based on Oscar Wilde's novel.



Peter Sander makes a well piece of animation.

Webbudo

by Matt Latchford.

Maestro (2005)

Five minutes before his big performance, the Maestro and his persistent mechanical assistant are in preparation mode. As the clock ticks, life at the top is not all it seems. The multi award-winning Maestro blends an operatic aria with CG animation.



Géza M. Tóth put a great effort in the sound design: you'll notice how nothing has been left to chance.
The "camera" roams 360 degrees around the little room so we see what's going on from all angles.

26 Cruse Close

By Natasha Kaser.

Deep Sea Tentacle

Deep Sea Tentacle is reminiscent of Norman McLaren’s early shorts.
One major theme in Kojirō Shishido’s work is reflections. He shows us beautiful reflections not only in surfaces like water, mirrors, but also in moving tentacles. Shishido renders his realistic backdrops images slightly blurry, endowing them with the hazy quality of memories or dreams.



Shishido clearly enjoys the possibilities of light and shade in his films. Not only does he experiment with intensity of light, but he also plays with the patterns made by light when it encounters different objects.

Untitled

By Larry Roibal.

The Critic (Oscar 1963)

Mel Brooks is an old man watching abstract animations. Simple, abstract, geometric shapes move and morph on the screen to what sounds like harpsichord music.
He doesn't understand them, so he heckles with strange commentary, to the annoyance of those around him.



In the background we hear a man giving his ideas about what he sees, completely without a clue. The voice of an audience member, who claims to be 71, complains through out most the film despite being told repeatedly by other audience members to keep quiet.
The voice is from Mel Brooks.

Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith

Matt Hirschfeld. Many of his pieces have been created on commission for writers, actors and even major motion picture studios. In 2006, he created a lithograph for the movie Crash that was distributed by Lionsgate Films to the actors and filmmakers of the movie after winning the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture.

The Dot and the Line (Oscar 1965)

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics is a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster, first published by Random House in 1963, which Chuck Jones and the MGM Animation/Visual Arts studio adapted into a 10-minute animated short film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, narrated by Robert Morley.
Jones had fun with the form.



A straight line is in love with a dot; however, the dot finds the line too plain, unimaginative, and rigid. She would rather spend her time with an undisciplined squiggle who is much more fun. The dejected line later realizes that he doesn't have to be unbending.
When the line demonstrates his abilities to the dot, she realizes that true beauty comes from discipline and that the squiggle is not for her.
You can buy Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection.

Field In Rain

Christopher Harris is a photo-based artist whose work explores the American West. His landscapes and seascapes are meditations on transcendence, a quality Americans have associated with the West for two hundred years. The small “scratch” photos are snapshots from a daily journal. Currently he is beginning to photograph the remaining native tallgrass prairie that extends from Minnesota to Oklahoma.

En Marchant (1969)

Ryan Larkin employs a variety of techniques (line drawing, color wash, etc.) to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot. The springing gait of youth, the mincing step of the high-heeled female, the doddering amble of the elderly: every event is registered with humor and individuality, to the accompaniment of special sound.
A cinematic portrait of people walking in their individual ways!



Excerpts from this film also appear in the Oscar-winning short about Larkin, Ryan.
Walking made Larkin an animation celebrity, catapulting him into the international spotlight.

Untitled

Steven Daily’s work is extremely stylized, and his paintings are emotionally evocative. He has shown in numerous galleries nationwide. He has created a sizeable body of work. Daily is extremely busy these days, working on several exciting new projects, so you can expect to see much more from him in the immediate future.

Pulcinella (1973)

Pulcinella is the principal character who dreams himself into a wild nightmare of a dream that leads us through an abstract world.
Emanuele Luzzati designed the forms and art style, and Giulio Gianini animated and took care of the technical aspect.



Pulcinella is an artistically imaginative and very inspiring short with a lot of free improvisation and a harmonious interaction between music and motion characterise. It was inspired by the Italian opera and the traditional folk theatre Commedia dell'Arte.

Bokka

Akab. He's editor and charter member of Shok Studio. He has collaborated with Marvel, Dark Horse and DC comics. His painting has been exhibited at L.57, Happening underground, Sovversivi, Milano's International Fumetto Triennale, Freeshout, No human no cry. His first film M A T T A T O I O has been selected for the Venice's Biennal. His movie Il corpo di Cristo has been selected at Bellaria Film Festival.

Jazz

By Ryan Terry.

Dark Angel

By Mielenero

Twin Hearts

Adriana De Barros. Artist, writer and poet. You can watch his Flash Visual Poems on SCENE360.

Her personal and commercial work has been recognized with numerous editorial and design awards and honors. She's also active in the design industry.

Umi Ga kikoeru (1993)

Unlike Ghibli Studio's more popular works, Ocean Waves is not a fantastic fairytale adventure or a metaphorical epic on man's relationship with nature.
The story is set in the city of Kōchi, on the Japanese island of Shikoku. It concerns a love triangle that develops between two good friends and Rikako, a new girl who transferred from Tokyo.
Taku travels to his hometown for his high school reunion. During the trip, he recalls the memories of the days in high school. Friendship, subtle love, a trip to Tokyo and so on all came back to him as the film evolves.



Ocean Waves simply focuses on the main characters and tells their story honestly. The dramatic conflicts are real and interesting.
It was directed by Tomomi Mochizuki and was based on the novel of the same title by Saeko Himuro.

Au bout du monde (1999)

The adventures of a precariously-balanced house. Built on the top of a hill, it swings to and fro to the great displeasure of its inhabitants. Through various gesticulations and unintelligible verbal exchanges, these small characters are imbued with a lot of personality.
The gags build seamlessly on each other as the house teeters on the tip of the mountain.



The dialogue-free comedy transpires on both sides of a house perched on a peak so pointy the tiny structure see-saws whenever humans or animals make a move. Konstantin Bronzit's sense of comic timing couldn't be better and his cartoony drawing style is very appealing.
Its humor is quite understated, with gags based on timing, perspective, and sound, all used sparingly.

Blue Monochrom

By Michel De Broin. Through a collection of objects and actions, his works seek to escape the constraining nature of modern utopian aspirations whilst attempting to reenact them in playful, jesting objects that glorify the referent on the one hand while upstaging it on the other.
Drawing on his doubt in the capacity and value of ideas, his sculptural projects seek to put them to the test by literally confronting them with the necessities of reality in assemblage that often troubles the ideas it purports to speak for.

Musicotherapie

Amaël Isnard, Manuel Javelle and Clément Picon directed this strange short, in which madness at the mental institution as the animals drive the monkey doctor crazy making music.



Musicotherapie is a very well done short.

Doggy Bag

Doggy Bag is a 3d short by Guillaume Cassuto, Thomas Moine and Sylvain Perlot, three students from France’s Supinfocom school.
At the same moment, in a bombed-out neighborhood, two starving tenants decide to eat the dog of the old woman who lives on the top floor of the building...



It's a macabre tale of the comically surreal lengths two men will go just to get a decent meal. The animation is snappy and thelighting excellent.

Alphabet blocks

By Lauren Nassef.

Cashback (2004)

Sean Ellis narrates a sedate and surreal story of broken love and reborn.
The protagonist is a reflective man, who works in a supermaket and struggles against the tyranny of time.
Ben Willis is an art student who works the night shift several times a week at the Whitechapel Sainsbury's. Heart broken and tortured by insomnia Ben explains his view and experience of female beauty.



The movie is about love, art and supermarket co-workers and shows an interesting view of time and time stopping. The most obvious artistic quality in the movie might be that of drawing, capturing beauty, but the red thread in the story is the path between one lost relation and the passionate flames of new love and the feelings it conquers.
Cashback was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. It was expanded into a full-length feature of the same name which was released by Gaumont in late 2006. It had its North American premiere on September 10, 2006, at the Toronto International Film Festival and has been screened at a number of other international festivals.
You can buy Cashback.

I Took the Wheel

By Gea.

Africa (1997)

The idea of this film is based on the interest in african painting and masks about faces and human body. This is the story of a young man who, doing is boring duty in an office, dreams about a journey into the mythical continent.

Francisco Lança realized a black and white crayons over acrilic painted backgrounds.

Cannes 2008

Palme d'Or
ENTRE LES MURS by Laurent Cantet

Grand Prix
GOMORRA by Matteo Garrone

Prize of the 61st Festival by Cannes ex-aequo
Catherine Deneuve for UN CONTE by NOËL by Arnaud DESPLECHIN
Clint Eastwood pour / for L’ÉCHANGE (The Exchange)

Award for the Best Director
ÜÇ MAYMUN (Three Monkeys / Les Trois Singes) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Jury Prize
IL DIVO by Paolo Sorrentino

Prix d'interprétation masculine
Benicio Del Toro for CHE by Steven SODERBERGH

Best Performance for an Actress
Sandra Corveloni for LINHA by PASSE by Walter SALLES, Daniela THOMAS

Award for the Best Screenplay
LE SILENCE by LORNA by Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE


IN COMPETTION - SHORT FILMS

Palme d'Or
MEGATRON by Marian Crisan

Jury Prize
JERRYCAN by Julius Avery


CAMERA D'OR

HUNGER by Steve McQueen (Un Certain Regard)

Mention Spéciale Caméra d'Or
VSE UMRUT A JA OSTANUS (Ils mourront tous sauf moi) by Valeria Gaï GUERMANIKA (Semaine Internationale by la Critique)


UN CERTAIN REGARD

Un Certain Regard Prize
TULPAN by Sergey Dvortsevoy

Jury Prize
TOKYO SONATA by Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Heart Throb Jury Prize
WOLKE 9 by Andreas Drese

The Knockout of Un Certain Regard
TYSON by James Toback

Prize of Hope
JOHNNY MAD DOG by Jean-Stéphane SAUVAIRE

CINEFONDATION

First Cinéfondation Prize
HIMNON (Hymne) by Elad Keidan (The Sam Spiegel Film and TV School, Israël)

Second Cinéfondation Prize
FORBACH by Claire Burger (La fémis, France)

Third Cinéfondation Prize
STOP by Park Jae-ok (The Korean Academy of Film Arts, Corée du Sud)
KESTOMERKITSIJÄT (Signalisation des routes) by Juho Kuosmanen (University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finlande)

Éramos pocos (2005)

After his wife leaves him, Joaquín brings his mother-in-law back home to look after him and his son.



Borja Cobeaga makes a simple, but neat short. There's a strange humour in Eramos poco you'll surely enjoy!