The Periwig Maker (1999)

The Periwig-maker is based on The Plague Years by Daniel Defoe. It took many years of hard work to the brother and sister Schäffler team. Their parents made the sets and props in Germany, Spitting Image provided studio space in London for the shoot animated by Phil Dale with puppets by Mackinnon & Saunders.



This short is about one of the many plagues that racked Europe. A Periwig maker seals himself off in medieval plague infested London to escape the danger of infection. When a little girl seeks his help his life is turned upside down. He, locked in his shop, observes the events and writes about them in his journal.
There is nothing sentimental about this film: it just seems to be a straight and no holds barred retelling of events during this plague. Mostly, we see shrouded bodies, and a young girl who lives in the tavern across the way that gets progressively sicker.
The animation style is beautiful and captivating even if the subject matter of the film is grim and unpleasant.



There are references to Jesus Christus' religion. The Pigmaker and the little girl were both mortal. The real story is about the periwig maker's great mistake: his attempt of self-preservation at the expense of Christian charity and mercy.

Snowsheet

JustinVisnesky makes photographs of the simple, quiet times in life; taking the ordinary and making it something more, something for the keeping.

Das Rad (2003)

Rocks is written and directed by Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel and Heidi Wittlinger. They used a mixture of stop motion, puppetry, and CGI animation.
Thus short is about the evolution of the mankind through the vision of … two rocks.
The film tracks a hillside from ancient times through the present and into the future, usually moving through time at high speed but occasionally switching to real time and showing the inhabitants and objects in motion in their day-to-day existence.



The stone-people Hew and Kew have seen a lot in their everlasting lives on top of their mountain. Therefore they're only mildly amazed by the ongoings in the valley below, they've got their own little problems to deal with. Mankind is discovering and inventing, instead of just woozeling, and this new behavior starts to threaten Hew's and Kew's stoic peacefullness...
They were imbued with so much personality.

Alien Campfire

Mike Sgier. You can visit his blog, too.

The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (Oscar 2005)

John Canemaker uses a dazzling array of animation styles and techniques, from black and white photographs to colorful childish drawings and much, explores the difficult emotional terrain of father/son relationships as seen through Canemaker's own turbulent relationship with his father.
It creates a wonderful mix between the reality and the dream, a true person and his image and for the director, between the desire of rediscovering his childhood and the fear about it. It's very sad as the father died before the film was made and it's strange what someone who didn't talk can say to his child and how love can impersonate itself in our lives and stories.



He made this film to resolve long-standing emotional issues he has with my late father. He wanted to find answers to our difficult relationship, to understand the reasons his father was always a feared figure in his childhood, why his father was always angry and defensive, verbally and physically abusive, and often in trouble with the lawuses.
The drawings are really simple but there's so much emotion and creativity that you go out of this film deeply moved and absolutely fascinated. It's the kind of film which makes you want to make animated films, thinking that it's something great and making you think something you didn't think before : animated films can be sometimes more powerful than any other films.
It is a very unusual perspective on The American Dream across all of the 20th century as it swings back and forth from bitter and cynical to loving and almost forgiving.

Andersen

By Miguel Tanco.