2009 OIAF Shorts Competition 4 Review
2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival Short Cartoons
Oct 28, 2009
Which cartoons floated the audience's boats at the 2009 OIAF Shorts Competition 4, and which sank like a stone? Find out here.
The most self-consciously strange selection of shorts at the 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival was also the weakest. Nevertheless, Short Competition 3 – which ran on Saturday, October 17th – still featured some spectacular animation from around the world.
Here are the spectacularly good, and spectacularly bad, highlights.
The Good
- 'Did U See That?' (Yuri Rhee, Jung Kim, Pual Kim & Hyun Jung Lee, South Korea): Part of the 'wow' factor involved in this short has to do with the fact that the creators are still in high school. Nevertheless, this short impresses with its sure sense of pacing, bizarre images and lovely narrative twist.
- 'Lebensader' (Angela Steffen, Germany): A little girl finds the beauty in a fallen leaf. However, her father points out that its beauty is partly due to the fact that tiny creatures are eating away at it. Spectacular animation ties the leaf's decay to the cancer ravaging the father's body. A powerful piece with autobiographical overtones.
- 'Nick Idents' (Ljubisa Djukic, Ole Keune, & Bettina Vogel, Germany): Once again, proof that promotional animation doesn't have to appeal to the lowest common denominator in these spectacular, surreal shorts.
- 'Darfur Drawings' (Bruce Alcock, Canada): Alcock's 2nd offering at the OIAF ('Vive la Rose' being the first) effectively uses children's drawings to bring home the horrors of the Darfur genocide. Powerful and haunting.
- 'Journey to the East' (Pete Candeland, Jamie Hewlett & Rob Valley, UK): This promotional animation for the BBC coverage for the Beijing Olympic Games – from the guys who animated Gorillaz – didn't wear out its welcome after countless viewings, which is a sure indication of its quality.
- 'Laska (Chick)' (Michal Socha, Poland): "I like it," an animator whispered to her friend during the screening. "The WTF is strong in this one." This graduate piece delving into the perils of male-female relations was very imaginative, and the ending featured a nice twist.
The Bad
There were a lot of jokes about the hideousness of Estonian animation thrown around the festival this year. In addition to the unpleasant, borderline-misogynistic Life Without Gabriella Ferri, there was at least one short on offer tonight to confirm the awful buzz.
- 'Kaasündinud Kohustused (Inherent Obligations)' (Rao Heidmets, Estonia): "Oh s***t," groaned an audience member when the opening credits rolled, drawing widespread laughter. At least 5 minutes too long, this interminable short about a pudgy man (with stick-on moustache) toying with vinyl dolls while violent scenes flashed on TV, played out "like a bad 1980's music video," according to animation professor Lowell Boston.
- 'Air and Kilometers' (Ingrid Booker, Australia): This music video for acoustic guitar phenom Kaki King didn't quite serve its purpose. It displayed an imaginative array of stop-motion found objects, but wasn't completely on-beat and didn't really go anywhere, unlike King's imaginative instrumental.
- 'Le Tiroir et le Corbeau (The Drawer and the Crow)' (Fréderick Tremblay, Canada): "This is our tax dollars at work," sighed an animator while watching this willfully obscure piece. The story of a hermit painter who keeps his girlfriends in a drawer, this 14-minute short found its tone and level of activity, and never left it.
- 'Inukshuk' (Camillelvis Thery, France): This short had its moments but it suffered from wonky staging, continuity and pacing.
The Ugly (Who Won?)
While 'Did U See That' was a serious contender (in large part because it was a high school animation), it was Angela Steffen's 'Lebensader' that stood out from the pack. A powerful, touching story that also featured beautiful animation
The copyright of the article 2009 OIAF Shorts Competition 4 Review in International Film Festivals is owned by Dominic von Riedemann. Permission to republish 2009 OIAF Shorts Competition 4 Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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