Originally published in RealTime magazine, September, 2009.

I began writing about Australian animation in 2003, but only by default. I was in the queues for the Melbourne International Film Festival waiting to see various short film programs, which is what I intended to review. I kept overhearing the names ‘Adam Elliot’ and ‘Harvie Krumpet’ in conversations between fellow filmgoers, and noted they were talking about animation, not short film. I wasn’t aware Australia had much of an animation industry. I had known student friends who made cartoons, but professionally? It wasn’t like local animators were ever mentioned in mainstream media, therefore they didn’t exist, in that if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest kind of way. But there was an insistence about this Elliot character that made me want to know more, and that’s how I came to interview him. That was before Adam’s Oscar success, and I was left with admiration for those who made painstaking animations in a country that barely acknowledges Australian live-action film, let alone something as marginalised as this medium (it seems likely there’ll always be a cross-section of society that sees animation as strictly ‘for kids’).

There have been some hiccups. A few RealTime writers, including myself, have criticised the oft-simplistic nature of Australian animation, usually directed towards storytelling. Generally, the technique is admirable and improving, especially since the CGI fad seems to be waning. RealTime’s reviews of the annual Melbourne International Animation Festival demonstrate this: some years, the festival’s local component seemed out of touch; recently, it has held its own with the international selections. The RealTime archives highlight other significant developments and patterns. Danni Zuvela’s review of Aboriginal animation from Canada and Australia focuses on work blessed with much storytelling potential at the historical and mythological levels. Ashley Crawford declares the slapstick Dadaism of Arlo Mountford’s extraordinary work in a league of its own. Dan Edwards takes a timely look at the 17-minute Sweet and Sour, an Australia-China co-production and a welcome change from what he terms Australia’s “depressing myopia” when it comes to non-US/UK film influences. And Keith Gallasch admires Lee Whitmore’s compelling The Safe House, “in which childhood, history and politics…come seamlessly together, a rarity in Australian film.”

Appraisals of international productions include no less than four reviews of Boca del Lupo’s theatre/animation hybrid, My Dad, My Dog; Angela Ndalianis’s seduction at the hands of ACMI’s Pixar exhibition; and Megan Carrigy’s analysis of the extraordinary animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, making the salient point that having the film “in general release…is significant since animation has become a major site for innovation in Australian short films”. A couple of historical overviews serve to contextualise: Adrian Martin passionately introduces The Illusion of Life II, a 576-page collection of essays from animation scholars past and present; while my own look at Flickerfest’s historical overview of Australian animation allows me to revisit the beloved “Life. Be In It” commercials of my youth, leading to the revelation that this country has always had an animation industry, just not where you’d expect to find it.

Carmen Torero.

Originally published in RealTime issue #92 Aug-Sept 2009 pg. 31.

IN ITS 9TH ITERATION, THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL’S PROGRAMMING POLICY CONTINUES TO BE BRAVE AND ADVENTUROUS, AND THIS RESULTED IN ANOTHER DIVERSE SET OF PROGRAMS. THIS YEAR, THE BOAST WAS THAT MIAF SCREENED OVER 400 FILMS SELECTED FROM OVER 2,000 ENTRIES, SPREAD OVER 40 PROGRAMS AND REPRESENTING OVER 30 COUNTRIES. THAT’S A LOT TO ABSORB IN JUST SEVEN DAYS AND, AS ALWAYS, WHILE SOME SELECTIONS MAY BE A LITTLE UNDERWHELMING, THERE ARE ALWAYS UNRESERVED CLASSICS AT EVERY TURN. I MEAN THAT BOTH HISTORICALLY (MIAF TAKES GREAT CARE TO PRESENT AN OVERVIEW OF ACKNOWLEDGED GEMS FROM THE PAST) AS WELL AS INDULGENTLY: THERE ARE SO MANY MASTERPIECES BEING PRODUCED TODAY, AND MIAF, SEEMINGLY, GARNERS THEM ALL.

Animating with sand
Each year, the festival spotlights a particular animation technique. In 2008, it was puppetry, which presented an excellent counterpoint to the industry’s surfeit of CGI. In 2009, it is sand animation, also promising. I was excited at the thought of a program dedicated to this laborious and visually stunning technique, which involves the manipulation of coloured powders (actual sand, most often, but also salt) over a light box, typically with hand brushes and air brushes. The program presented eight ‘classics’ and seven recent films, but the outcome was hit and miss. It seemed the form too often dictates the content because the technique necessarily involves swirling, dissolving imagery, generating too many twee scenarios (ponderous childhood reminiscing, dissolving memories) and a little too much navel-gazing, windswept hair and fluffy clouds.

A notable exception was Aleksandra Korejwo’s Carmen Torero (Poland, 1996; 3’45), based on Bizet’s Carmen. Korejwo’s skill is incredible, presenting a consistently mesmerising interpretation of Carmen’s interactions with the bullfighter, whose majestic cape-swinging movements through time and space engulf them both in great swathes of colour and grain (salt injected with dye in this instance, manipulated by animal feathers instead of brushes). Fur Mathilde (director Alla Churikova, Germany, 2009; 7’00) was also masterful, mixing a young girl’s (literally) black-and-white existence with her escape into the noise and colour of the city—some of the latter scenes are almost photorealistic, almost 3D, astonishing when you remember this is sand. But what I would really like to see in sand animation is a horror film. Imagine it, all that red powder and tenuous human forms —it would make for an excellent shower of blood, dissolving not into soft-focus memories but into traumatised brain tissue, skull fragments and exploded flesh. Just a thought…

Internationals
There were 10 international programs: six mixed sessions plus tailored programs for digital forms, abstract films, long shorts and new Croatian animation. I enjoyed Bubblicious (Geoffroy De Crecy, France, 2008; 3’15), a film clip for Rex the Dog’s eponymous French house track, featuring a cut-out-style mutt rendered in 3D and singing the diva-like club anthem with serious attitude. Ridiculous, but infectious and super stylish. Two animations were distinguished by their hands-on technique. The Note (Hwang Bo Kumbyul South Korea, 2008; 3’30), about a letter that comes to life before the eyes of a child, is mesmerising, folding in on itself as ethereal bits of tracing paper prove to hold all sorts of secrets—morphing shapes, objects and scenarios barely held together by sticky tape…Almost like one of the family (Astrid Goransson, Sweden, 2008; 9’45) is bizarre and magical, with charcoal drawings on walls coming to life around a housewife in her kitchen, forming nested worlds within worlds that draw her deeper and farther away from the domestic.

The Spine.

The Necktie (Jean-Francois Levesque, France, 2008; 12’15) is a wonderful tale of Kafkaesque bureaucracy that pits our puppet hero against an internecine office conspiracy involving people who are nothing more than (again, literally) paper cut-outs. It’s an instructive example of form underscoring a story, rather than dictating it. Chris Landreth’s The Spine (Canada, 2009; 11’00), voted Best of the Fest, is a breathtaking combination of sketch artistry impressed onto CGI frames in a style Landreth has dubbed “psycho-realism.” According to the filmmaker, CGI makes animators lazy, able to cheat and do ‘incredible’ tricks without thinking; psycho-realism, then, tricks the audience into thinking the scene is reality, until everything collapses into disturbing surrealism. In The Spine, characters are trapped in a marriage counselling session as strips of flesh hang from their faces, while the lead character, free from his domineering wife, grows an actual, literal spine when initially he was just a blob of a man. Landreth is working on an animated biopic of HP Lovecraft, a truly exciting prospect. Other international highlights were to be found in the London’s Calling program, a blend of advertisements and short films showcasing the best of that city’s animation, including Marc Craste’s Varmints (UK, 2008; 24’00), which is truly warped in its mix of elements: dystopian sci fi, apocalyptic alien invasion and, yes, cuddly animals. City Paradise (Gaelle Denis, UK, 2004; 6’00) is an outstanding live-action/animation tale of a Japanese girl who visits London only to find a city even stranger than she is. It’s a really smart inversion of the standard Lost in Translation-style ‘foreignness’ attributed to places like Japan.

Australian Panorama
With only a few misfires, the Australian Panorama was true blue. Factoids and Slapstick (Doug Bayne, 2008; 4’15) was part of the BigPond/Screen Australia–sponsored Great Moments in History competition, in which animators were invited to consider “funny stuff that happened between the Big Bang and the end of time.” Ostensibly, it tells the story of Vlad the Impaler, but the animator steps into the frame to express doubts about the whole storytelling process—clever and fun. The Aussie Panorama screened two other films in this series, but they weren’t as good, relying on tedious toilet humour. There should be an unimpeachable, ironclad rule in film school, along with those other immutable maxims they teach about good story: “NO FART/POO/BUM JOKES. Ever.”

Be Famous and Die (Simon O’Carrigan, 2008; 4’45) uses simple techniques to deliver a deeply felt monologue about the peculiarities of Melbourne’s obsession with statues of famous people. Laura Stitzel’s fabulous The Roaring Tide (2008; 4’00), drawn in Roaring 20s deco style (all blocky, angular shapes and zoot suits) is, joyously, about shipwrecked passengers who simply refuse to admit the severity of their situation, insisting instead on partying and unadulterated hedonism. Bronze Mirror (Susan Danta, 2008; 7’00), voted best Australian film of the festival, was a worthy contender. Based on a Korean folk tale, it uses surreal CGI to depict rural folk in old Korea mesmerised by a ‘demon’ they’ve never seen before—themselves in a humble mirror. But perhaps Mutt (Glen Hunwick, 2007; 7’00), about a dog in the outback obsessed with his ball even though he has no one to play fetch with him, should have got the nod. The technique (rounded, grossly caricatured characters), the set design and the colour scheme are outstanding, and the story is just too funny, the poor dog’s antics lingering in the memory. It was one of two great Aussie canine stories, the other being Dog with Electric Collar (Steve Baker, 2008; 4’45) which uses a whip-sharp style—pulsating, fantastical and colourful—to portray a dog who just can’t stop barking, even under threat of painful death.

All up, the MIAF team, led by Malcolm Turner, have really settled into a good groove, with a programming style that delivers. Our local animators have also risen to the challenge, proffering a brace of films that stand up to scrutiny. Here’s to the future.

2009 Melbourne International Animation Festival, ACMI Cinemas, Melbourne, June 22-28; www.miaf.net

Daumë, Ben Russell.

Originally published in RealTime issue #87 Oct-Nov 2008 pg. 23.

ONE OF THE INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS THE ‘PARALLEL WORLD’ EFFECT. THE FESTIVAL YOU EXPERIENCE MAY WELL BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM ANYONE ELSE’S, SO MUCH SO YOU MAY SOMETIMES WONDER IF YOU WERE AT THE SAME EVENT AT ALL. THIS YEAR, A FRIEND WAS TELLING ME ABOUT THE ENGLISH COMING-OF-AGE DRAMAS, THE IRANIAN RITES-OF-PASSAGE FILMS AND THE IRISH HUNGER STRIKE RE-ENACTMENT THAT PROVIDED HER WITH HER MOST VIVID FESTIVAL MOMENTS. I WAS TELLING HER I FELT LIKE I’D BEEN AT FILM SCHOOL, WATCHING AND LEARNING ABOUT THE ART OF GUERRILLA FILMMAKING AND HOW TO WORK ‘RIGHT OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM.’ FOR MY FESTIVAL WAS FILLED WITH GEORGE ROMERO ZOMBIE FLICKS (ROMERO BEING THE ULTIMATE MAVERICK), THE ADMIRABLE PROGRAM OF OZPLOITATION FARE (EXCAVATING IGNORED STRATA OF AUSTRALIAN FILM HISTORY), AND THE WONDERFUL ‘EXPANDED CINEMA’ WORLDS OF GUY SHERWIN, BEN RUSSELL AND BEN RIVERS.

Sherwin’s films were shown in a dedicated program at ACMI, while the two Bens shared a program; Sherwin and Russell also performed at Who is Miss Roder?, a subsidiary festival event at 45downstairs, a gallery and performance space in an old city warehouse. Over three performances, it featured the two internationals plus Australian artists in a mix of experimental cinema, performance art, sound design and video mixing. This was a great idea, enabling Sherwin and Russell to present a different side to their work, and it really added to the sense that, this year, MIFF was something different.

Ben Rivers
At ACMI, the best of the Ben Rivers material was Ah, Liberty!, shot on 16mm black-and-white stock, an exercise in faux ethnographic, mockumentary weirdness: feral kids in sea monster masks scavenge in rusting machinery dumps while odd scenarios play out around them—a car with no doors, for example, being driven in circles on a muddy field. Rivers projects surreal horror vibes, radiating 10 shades of uncanny, with moments of hilarity jolting you into the realm of the simply deranged. Most of his work is like this: unsettling, weird, but nonetheless conforming to its own internal logic. The overall effect is surprisingly ‘narrative’, given the lack of dialogue, the ultra-rapid editing and the warped tableaux. Another highlight was This is My Land, Rivers’ portrait of the Scottish hermit Jake Williams. Rivers’ scratchy träume style is totally suited to Williams’ self-contained, eccentric lifestyle. As he tinkers with the compost, builds bird feeders and tends his ramshackle house, Williams, in his lilting Scottish voiceover, says whatever comes into his head: an internal world that, like Rivers’ films, conforms to its own weirdly centred chronology.

Guy Sherwin
Sherwin has been making his miniature masterpieces since the early 1970s, building and unpeeling layers of tone, texture and grain, above all with acuity to create a shifting world of perception. A camera is affixed to the back of a bicycle wheel, simply recording the shadows from the bike as it meanders under the sun, then through a puddle of water, calmly recording the wet tyre marks which look like unravelling DNA. A cat sleeps on a roof. The film is slightly sped up. The creature is dreaming, twitching and kicking its paws into the air. Suddenly, it wakes with a start, looks around and wanders off. An elderly couple stand around laughing and joking. Between them is a mirror, which reflects Sherwin winding the crank of the box camera recording this poetic little piece. The film is silent. We watch Sherwin watching the couple who watch us watching Sherwin. These films were all shown at ACMI, where Sherwin introduced them, expressing surprise that his work was being displayed via state-of-the-art equipment. Normally, he said, his films are screened in a small bar or café type environment, where an element of performance comes into play.

Who is Miss Roder? provided that environment. Here, Sherwin presented his work in partnership with Lynn Loo. Vowels and Consonants was a piece for six projectors that screened variations on a simple, flickering font printed from computer onto acetate and then transferred to film. O’s and N’s fly into frame like amoeba under a microscope, vibrating and oscillating in response, seemingly, to the treated voices that announce their arrival; I’m sure the letters were triggering sound somehow. Sherwin and Loo manipulate the projectors to introduce fades, cuts and cross-fades matching the overlapping effect of the voice. The letters fold and bounce off each other. The overall effect is synaesthetic, like you’re actually watching sound take shape (and in fact the sound design was really something too—an ominous, post-industrial hum).

Man with Mirror was amazing, but it’s complicated to explain, let me try. Sherwin stands in the middle of the space, holding a mirror, which is painted white on the reverse side. Onto the board, the projector beams film of a younger Sherwin (from 1976) doing exactly the same. With a twist of the board, young Sherwin morphs into the older version. He turns the mirror to the reflective side, while young Sherwin turns the board over to the white side, which the real-life Sherwin is doing also. The latter then turns his board over to reveal himself, and then flips back to the mirror, which is now reflecting back to us young Sherwin in profile, the board outstretched in front of him. He turns to face us, flips the board over to the white side and we see the older Sherwin now standing in profile, holding the board in front of him. And on and on in endless variations. It’s like a form of time travel: a man disappearing into light and shadow and reappearing as a younger version of himself. It elicited ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the audience, and rightly so: the choreography was mind-bending.

Ben Russell
At ACMI, Ben Russell’s films included one from a static camera fixed on a wildly stuttering neon sign and another recording workers leaving a factory in Dubai: field recordings, the unblinking eye of the lens inducing subtle changes in people’s behaviour just by being there. Then there was Black and White Trypps Number Four. Russell takes a strip of 35mm film from a Richard Pryor performance and treats, warps and re-projects it, so that it folds in on itself, as does Pryor’s spiel, which pokes fun at white people and their paranoia about black people. Pryor trips on stage, the image stutters, then burns away as if caught in the projector, melting, reforming, white gaps in the film becoming black, black becoming white, until Pryor ends up leached away to a white screen, his voice slowed to a scratchy burr, and we are left to interpret the meaning: is Pryor a reverse racist? Or is Russell just having loads of fun (artistically and philosophically) with ‘black’ and ‘white’, gaining maximum mileage from minimal materials?

At Miss Roder, Russell upstaged Sherwin, screening a loop from his fake ethnographic film, Daumë, which screened in full at ACMI and is a brilliant piece of work in its own right. Again, how to describe? Young men dressed as ‘natives’ engage in strange rituals, throwing chairs at each other, punching each other randomly. The events are seen from many different angles. Black and white, flickering film. Bizarre masks and a heightened sense of surreality. It’s no wonder Russell and Rivers feel simpatico. At the performance, wearing nothing but underpants and a Church of the Subgenius mask, Russell manipulated the loop with two projectors, blurring the films together, flying by the seat of his (under)pants, improvising a pure performance of analogue dexterity (also manipulating sound via a mixing board, spewing forth granulated sheets of noise). Here, the aesthetic and philosophy of filmmaking becomes a raging, malleable, shapeshifting beast.

More Magic
All the Miss Roder acts were excellent. Other highlights included Jon Pak’s performance piece The Feast, in which a small restaurant is actually set up in the space. Two actors, a man and a woman, enter. They sit down to eat, served by an impudent waiter. Their every movement is wired for ultra-amplified sound. There is a video screen upon which their images are projected, electronically treated so that they appear to be underwater. They are nervous with each other and every gesture, burp and nervous laugh is magnified painfully and uncomfortably. Steven Ball’s Personal Electronics was an absorbing study of paranoia, surveillance and the thoroughly fruity modern day phenomenon of ‘gang stalking’ (Google it, you won’t believe it), with pixelated video footage snaking around a suburb, recording people, cars, houses, neighbours, while an unhinged woman in voiceover tries to make sense of a world she thinks is out to get her. Later, Ball did a spoken word reading from similar case studies in his detached tones, while the insane pixels continued to unfurl.

I left these performances feeling divided: half inspired that so much amazing work is being done with scant resources, old media and boundless imagination, half annoyed with myself for wasting so much time watching crap film over the last few years when there’s all this to explore.

The Guy Sherwin, Ben Russell and Ben Rivers expanded cinema program tour to the Melbourne and Brisbane International Film Festivals was curated and organised by Danni Zuvela, Joel
Stern and Sally Golding (OtherFilm).

Guy Sherwin, Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, Melbourne International Film Festival, Otherfilm, ACMI, July 30; Who is Miss Roder?, presented by MIFF, Greyspace, Otherfilm, Arts House; 45 downstairs, Melbourne, Aug 1-2.

PeursDuNoir [Fear(s) of the Dark] – Burns 06, Charles Burns.

Originally published in RealTime issue #86 Aug-Sept 2008 pg. 24.

THIS YEAR’S MIAF WAS FLUSH WITH RICHES. SELECTED FROM OVER 2000 ENTRIES, THERE WERE 150 FILMS IN COMPETITION AND 150 OUTSIDE OF IT. THERE WAS AN EIGHT-PROGRAM INTERNATIONAL SELECTION, MUSIC VIDEOS, DIGITAL ANIMATION, STUDIO AND PRODUCER SHOWCASES, A SERIES OF SAN FRANCISCO HISTORICAL ANIMATIONS, ANIMATED DOCUMENTARIES AND THEMED PACKAGES WITH TITLES LIKE LATE NIGHT BIZARRE AND STRANGE IDEAS AND BAD CRAZINESS. THERE WERE GRADUATE, TEEN AND KIDS PROGRAMS, ANIMATION 101 SESSIONS AND THE CAREERS IN ANIMATION FORUM, ALL ADDING TO THE CRUCIAL WORK MIAF DOES IN BUILDING A VIBRANT ANIMATION CULTURE FROM THE GROUND UP.

The technique focus this year was on puppet animation. I’ve been bored with CGI’s dominance so I welcomed it. MIAF curator Malcolm Turner, introducing the Icons of Puppet Animation screening, highlighted how puppetry can uniquely express the soul of an animated character. Jiri Trnka’s allegorical masterpiece The Hand (Czechoslovakia 1966, 17mins) was the exemplar. According to Turner, this was one of the first puppet animations to feature static faces, telling the story of a down-at-heel sculptor making art in his small apartment. An enormous, live-action hand breaks the frame, filling the apartment with its bulk and forcing the artist to make sculptures in its likeness, attaching strings to the artist and manipulating his actions, or destroying whatever non-hand art the artist produces. The allusion to totalitarianism is clear, but the state’s capacity to endlessly erase and reinscribe its own identity in order to control and dominate is also apparent. This is reinforced by the contrast between the puppet-artist’s mournful, unblinking face, which becomes a screen for the audience’s imagination, and the hand’s everchanging bulk, trying every trick it can—even dressing its fingers in lacy lingerie—to lure the artist.

Another Icon standout was Balance (directors Christoph & Wolfgang Lauenstein, Germany 1989, 8mins). Five identical, skinny, bald characters with sunken eyes and prison-camp greatcoats stand on a platform suspended in space with no visible means of support. If one moves, the platform tips and they all go sliding close to the edge and oblivion; therefore they must work with each other to maintain balance. It’s finally a devious and deadly game as curiosity, then jealousy, brings them undone. The bleak monochromes of the set and costume design give this an existential charge that is hard to shake off. Kataku (The House in Flames, director Kihachiro Kawamoto, Japan, 1979, 17mins), a fable about attraction and choice, is like a Japanese doll set come to life, all slow movement, glossy faces and hair, watercolour backgrounds and scenery, almost imperceptible stillness melting into exquisite motion poetry, mixing noh and bunraku styles. Pygmalion (Arnold Burovs, Latvia 1967, 9’45mins) is a brilliant union of clockwork figures and metronomic sound design as a sad, bearded inventor creates a mechanical woman only to become lost in her gaze and ultimately the op art scenery surrounding her. The Philips Broadcast of 1938 (Holland 1938, 9’30mins) featured George Pal’s amazing and beloved Puppetoons, incredibly flexible puppet characters that contort and shape shift with sheer glee, so skilfully realised and synchronised via Pal’s replacement animation technique [using multiple puppets or parts for each character move. Eds] that they look hand-drawn.

Of the contemporary puppet animations, the standout was Madame Tulti-Pulti (Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski, Canada 2007, 17’25mins), an intricate stop motion that took me somewhere I’ve never been before. The titular Madame boards a strange, steampunk train powered by an enormous turbine. Dressed like a 30s Parisienne, she settles into her compartment and tries to read a book. On the overhead bag rack, two men are hunched over a chess set. Whenever the train hits a bump, the chess pieces fly into the air and rearrange themselves in different combinations on the board. A freaky kid stares at the woman. Then a beefy pervert makes the fucking signal with the time-honoured ‘O’ sign of one hand penetrated by the index finger of the other. Poor Madame. She nods off and wakes up to find everyone gone and an alien green mist polluting the compartment. Shadowy figures glide past and, when she investigates, it appears that everyone but her has been the victim of, I think, an organ-stealing black market operation. Perhaps. I won’t pretend to know what it’s all about, suffice to say that Madame Tulti-Pulti has quite clearly taken a train ride to hell. The other remarkable aspect of this film, besides the scenery, the stage sets and the character of Madame herself, wafer thin and etched with grain, is the filmmakers’ technique of compositing live-action human eyes onto the puppets. A kind of hellish variant on the 60s animated TV series Clutch Cargo, it has a supremely bizarre, preternatural touch that plunges the viewer deep into an uncanny valley.

Live Life (Jonathan Pasternak, Israel, 2006, 5’30mins) is a self-consciously odd Day of the Dead puppet musical featuring decomposing versions of Albert Einstein, Joey Ramone and other celebs all gathered in The Ossiary, the famous Czech church adorned with 40,000 human bones. This lunatic troupe is led by Johnny Cash in a rousing rendition of the William Shatner song, “Live life like you’re gonna die, coz you’re gonna.” Even the Ossiary’s skulls join in on the chorus. I loved The Bridge (Vincent Bierrewaerts, Belgium, 2007, 13mins), about a boy who lives with his father on a mountain top. When he accidentally kills his dad, the boy grows up alone, thinking he’s trapped up on high, watching the bombing of the city far down below in some unnamed war. The only access to the outside world used to be a bridge that fell down long ago, but eventually the boy finds a tunnel down through the mountain and wanders the shell-shocked city alone. The puppet boy is masterfully rendered: pure expressive innocence memorably etched onto his bulbous eyes and round head.

L’Animateur.

The Australian Panorama was maybe the best Australian animation program of the last few years. L’Animateur (Nick Hilligoss, 2006, 3’45mins) takes a corny premise, the Garden of Eden, and infuses it with a meta-narrative on the joy of animation itself. A medieval jester lands on an planet uninhabited save for a few frogs. He unpacks a little portable stage set and places two lifeless wooden puppets on it. They are attached to strings but then he zaps them with some kind of beam and they move about autonomously. They see a tree with apples and, naturally, eat them. Flesh subsequently grows on their bodies, there is music cranked out by the jester and the frog audience dances in thrall. When the humans are fully realised, the jester pulls the floor out from under them and they fall to the ground. The jester packs up and flies to another planet, leaving behind the first human life on Earth and a performance those frogs will always remember.

Other Australian standouts included the hilarious, affecting Monkeynaut (Snooze Animation, 2007, 7’15mins) about what really went on in those early chimp-only space missions (hint: it involves lots of long, yellow fruit). Professor Pebbles (Pierce Davison, 2006, 12’45mins) is inventively realised with its tale of a minion of Satan who has a mid-life crisis on his 500th birthday and decides to go above ground for a change of pace, yet can’t quite shed his wicked ways. The lurid colour scheme and claymation weirdness make an imprint on the retina. The Goat that Ate Time (Lucinda Schreiber, 2007, 7mins) is really beautiful, both in terms of its textured technique and its sentiment, about a voracious goat who eats everything under the sun including clocks and watches, with the timepieces and their chronological ‘nutrition’ slipstreaming her into an endless, timeless present.

And, now, just as I ran out of time to see everything at the festival, so too I’m out of space, with just enough words to big up the portmanteau film Fear(s) of the Dark (Canada 2007, 85mins). Based on the work of 10 graphic artists and comic-book creators, and almost entirely monochrome, it weaves nightmares from the most basic of materials, black and white, for all nightmares emerge from the shadows. My favourite scary story was Richard McGuire’s about a man who is lost in a snowstorm and takes refuge in an abandoned house. Inside, he has to find his way around in compete darkness, the brief flickering of light from his candle exposing what looks to be floral patterned wallpaper, but may or may not be a woman’s dress. And ‘she’ may or not be holding a meat cleaver. The floral shapes melt back into the dark as the candle goes out and the games of illusion begin again. In the morning the whiteness of the outside world proves as treacherous as the black of night, with a glimmer of help for the man frustratingly melting back into the snow-covered landscape as clearly as it emerged.

Finally, congratulations to MIAF for its bold, imaginative programming. The only sour note is that all events weren’t sold out. Readers, do you know what you have in your own backyard?

Melbourne International Animation Festival 2008, ACMI, June 16-22, www.miaf.net/2008/home.html.

Ward 13.

Originally published in RealTime issue #84 April-May 2008 pg. 25

IN COMPILING A PROGRAM OF AUSTRALIA’S BEST ANIMATION SHORTS FOR FLICKERFEST, CURATOR ANTHONY LUCAS CHOSE FILMS THAT INSPIRED HIS OWN ANIMATION CAREER, INCLUDING TV COMMERCIALS. LUCAS DESCRIBES THE PROGRAM AS “A RETRO VIEW JUMPED UP ON TANG, WEARING GOLDEN BREED STUBBIES, RIDING A MALVERN STAR, WITH THE STREAMERS COMING OFF THE HANDLEBARS, DOWN TO THE MILK BAR FOR A CHIKITO.” MEANING WE’RE IN THRALL TO AN AUSSIE SUBURBIA AS DISLOCATING AND UNCANNY AS THE BEST GOTHIC HORROR, BUT WITH BETTER JOKES.

In Darra Dogs (1993), the veteran filmmaker Dennis Tupicoff narrates his childhood in the bleak, industrial Brisbane suburb of Darra. Centrally, it’s the story of how the death and disappearance of Tupicoff’s pet dogs traumatised him into adulthood, but there’s no treacly sentimentality, just the grimmest fatalism reflected in the animation, with its hard, etched lines tracing maps of pain against stark, primary colour backgrounds. Still, the dogs themselves are rendered beautifully, even the scene in which Tupicoff comes across a rotting canine carcass in a lake. The scene is a work of art in a visionary film, and Darra Dogs is a deeply affecting testament, hewn from bare trauma, its images recorded as if directly from the mind’s eye.

Sarah Watt’s Local Dive (1988) resolves in a more upbeat fashion as a socially awkward girl uses the local swimming pool as a wormhole into fantasy. Contrasting sharply with the banality of the other patrons, she dives underwater where she imagines herself as a marine creature, alternately graceful and predatory. Watt’s paint-on-glass technique brilliantly evokes the psychedelic awkwardness of youth.

The fondly remembered TV ads (despite the lamentable absence of Mr Sheen) are mostly taken from the 70s and earlier, contrasting the late period angst with the sheer jouissance of a young nation finding its feet. The first of two Life Be In It ads (both 1977) joyfully scrolls from screen top to screen bottom, innocent tableaux taken from city and country life (before 21st century affluenza and alcopops apparently made the streets and parks unsafe). In the second, the famous fat, alcoholic Norm, symbol of a nation, makes an appearance. The moment when he decides to go for a walk instead of pursuing the sedentary life is hilarious. The animation pauses, the familiar jingle slows down, and Norm takes a mighty step up from his armchair and out into the world. It’s presented with all the gravitas of Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing until the spell is broken by a live action John Newcombe at Mission Control. Sporting a handlebar moustache you could land an Apollo capsule on, Newk congratulates the cartoon fatman with a matey thumbs up and the impenetrable call sign, “Bewdy, Norm.”

In the ad for KO Hairspray (1977), two blokey, boofheaded bears discover the camp joys of personal grooming, while the SPC Baked Beans & Spaghetti ad (“for hungry little human beans”) has a typically maddening Mike Brady jingle and trippy animated spag and beans that morph into musical notation. The Life’s a Ball ad for Jaffas features zoot-suited characters breakdancing like an animated version of Duran Duran’s Rio album cover, while the iconic Mortein ad (1962) starring Louie the Fly renders the tedious chore of catching and killing household vermin a game of fun and intrigue for all the family via the smokescreen of catchy jingles, noir animation and the bland, neutral typography of the Mortein can.

Bertie the Aeroplane appears in a classic Aeroplane Jelly ad from 1942, in which he surprisingly discovers UFOs, described by the narrator as “flying saucers.” But the first widely reported sighting of a UFO, and the first use of the term “flying saucer” to describe it, was by the civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold in 1947. So was Aeroplane Jelly in on some giant conspiracy? Was this seemingly innocuous food combine using the cloak of homely consumerism and the “aw, shucks” cuteness of a fat, wobbly, anthropomorphised plane to expose Australians to the truth a full five years before the rest of the world?

The program also features Leisure (1976), Bruce Petty’s film about the need for leisure time in a society increasingly dominated by industry and work. At times it comes on like some sci-fi public service announcement beamed in from a far-future utopia in which all crime and dissent has been eliminated. Spouting aphorisms like “In order to make life more certain, humans took up industry” and “the new challenge for humans is leisure”, I couldn’t quite work out if it was having a lend or not. Philosophically, Petty, the famous Australian newspaper cartoonist, appears to be completely serious, making the point with virtuosic style incorporating line drawing and collage, like a more stately Terry Gilliam. Even more bizarre, this complex meditation on the nature of existence won the 1976 Best Animated Short Film Oscar. Who said the Academy had no taste?

Adam Elliot is also featured, and he of course repeated Petty’s Oscar win with Harvie Krumpet in 2003. But Lucas makes room for Elliot’s Cousin (1998) instead, a black-and-white, rawer, darker Krumpet prototype. Lucas himself got in on the Academy act in 2006 with a nomination for The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, but of his own work he’s chosen to include Slim Pickings, a sweet little claymation about a green alien alone on a small planet who has run out of food. The Little Prince influence is obvious, yet smartly integrated.

Ideally, Peter Cornwell’s Ward 13 should also have been nominated for the 2003 Best Animated Short Film Oscar—perhaps it should even have won. It’s a remarkably accomplished tale of a road-accident victim who wakes up in a hospital of horrors, fending off tentacled mutants, nurses in Halloween-style hockey masks, two-headed dogs and orderlies wielding bone saws. With no dialogue, this stop-motion masterpiece is told kinetically. Its set piece is a jaw dropping scene with hospital bed trolleys and wheelchairs used as escape vehicles and walking sticks wielded as Ninja swords, rivalling Mad Max 2’s lauded chase climax for inventiveness and (stop) motion sickness.

Cane Toads.

Wendy Chandler’s Union Street (1990), a tale of street-level suburban machinations, is narrated by Andrew Denton and is beautifully ‘acted’, with fabulous photographic cut-outs coloured in and collaged, providing a graphic match for the intricately plotted drama. Lucinda Clutterbuck’s Tiga (1989) eulogises the Tasmanian Tiger with reminiscences from locals, a sumptuous soundtrack and variegated rotoscoping. Max Bannah’s sardonic One Man’s Instrument (1990), about a man who makes flora flourish amid the concrete jungle by playing his trumpet, is one of two films with distressing close-ups of a character’s penis and testicles; Bannah has the old meat and two veg literally pissing on the man’s dream, crass urbanisation winning out. Andrew Silke and David Clayton’s Cane Toads (2002) is a fine example of CGI (rare among these films), starring Baz, the horny-skinned animal version of Life Be In It’s Norm, except that Baz doesn’t take great strides, instead getting mangled for his efforts to better himself in a number of bloody and imaginative scenarios.

Anthony Lucas deserves praise for assembling this excellent program, and the inclusion of the TV ads was inspired. Assuming you’re of a certain generation, the frisson of recognition they provide reminds us that the inclusion of the words ‘animation’ and ‘Australian’ in the same sentence is not such a strange concept. And even if you’re not of that generation, the chance to see where the luminaries collected here might have gained inspiration from is invaluable. With its trip through the shimmering talent of Tupicoff, Petty, Watt and Cornwell, the program very effectively counterbalances any suggestion that Australian animation had no pulse pre-Krumpet.

As for themes, well, there is the Aussie gothic but if we’re going to read ‘Australianness’ into the program, let’s think in terms of “quality” rather than cultural cliche. After all, as Peter Cornwell said when asked why the Academy has suddenly embraced Australian animation, “There’s a different Australian sensibility, but it is really difficult to say what that is. We don’t really have an animation industry. There’s so many obstacles that you really have to be passionate about finishing it, you’re not just cynically making it for the market.”

Well said.

Flickerfest 17th International Short Film Festival: The Bold, the Brave & the Best—Celebrating 30 years of Australian Animation, curator Anthony Lucas, 124 minutes, Flickerfest national tour, Jan-March 2008.

Still from The Boy Who Loved Rain.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published in RealTime issue #81 Oct-Nov 2007.

RECENTLY IN REALTIME AND ELSEWHERE I’VE BEEN CRITICAL OF AUSTRALIAN SHORT FILM AND ANIMATION, SO MUCH SO I’M BEGINNING TO BORE MYSELF (AND DOUBTLESS OTHERS) WITH THE OLD REFRAIN. STILL, I VOICE THESE CRITICISMS FROM A POSITION OF RESPECT FOR THE AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENT SCENE AND ITS UNREALISED POTENTIAL, WHICH IS WHY IT WAS SO REFRESHING TO ATTEND THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL’S AUSTRALIAN SHORT STORIES SESSION.

These weren’t shorts made by superhero writer-directors who think they can do it all, insulting the audience’s intelligence with woeful scripts, lame punch lines, toilet humour and clichéd narrative tricks, and they weren’t shot in such a hyperaware glossy. fashion that I was forced to wonder whether the director wouldn’t be happier making ads. Instead we were presented with genuine, lived-in dramas rooted in experience and a sense of worldly self-awareness. These were films made by people who actually have something to say about their immediate environment, rather than by filmmakers who appear to have little motive other than adding another notch to their showreel by aping overseas trends (trends that are stale by the time they reach these shores anyway).

Indigenous short film
Australian Stories, a showcase for Indigenous film, included four animation shorts produced as part of the 12-strong Dust Echoes series that collects Dream Time stories from Arnhem Land, produced by the ABC in association with Deakin University and the Djilpin Arts Aboriginal Corporation. Of these, Mermaid Story (James Calvert, 5mins) was told entirely through music and sound—no narration, no dialogue. Mixing cut-outs, silhouettes and traditional drawing styles, the simple story, about a man who chooses to live with mermaids, thus forsaking his family, was achingly poignant. The Bat and the Butterfly (Dave Jones, 5mins) was perhaps the most impressive. Its characters looked like a cross between gingerbread men, stone carvings and claymation, and the story was told through snatched whisperings and ambient desert sounds, culminating in a powerful tale of cowardice and lack of responsibility versus courage and redemption. Dust Echoes was stunning, with every element in synch, creating a rich, sensory experience—visualising the Dream Time by melding the techniques of the future with the raw emotion of the very distant past.

The live action in Australian Stories was also impressive. Pauline Whyman avoided sentimentality in Back Seat (5mins), a film seen mostly through the blurred POV of the child protagonist, aimed at the Aboriginal family she sees at the end receding through the window of the car driven by her white foster parents. Stark emotional dynamics told the story: close-ups of car locks and windows; a simple Polaroid frame left lingering in the memory.

The hilarious Nana (Warwick Thornton, 5mins) featured a young girl’s comments on the titular oldie, an ancient lady whose good works include beating up alcohol smugglers who threaten the sanctity of her community. In her down time Nana paints, delighting the little girl with her off-the-cuff remark that “I paint the same painting every time. White people wouldn’t know the difference anyway.”

Adrian Wills’ Jackie Jackie (5mins) is a completely warped film about an Aboriginal girl who has to put up with the ghastly prejudices of her white boss at the supermarket where she works. All around her, the robots who work at this place are represented in hypergarish style: blue plastic wigs, clothes in colours that would do Howard Arkley proud. In the end, the boss gets his and the message is clear: stick up for yourself, because self-respect is often all you’ve got. Back Seat, Nana and Jackie Jackie are from the AFC Indigenous Branch’s latest initiative, Bit of Black Business (see page 23).

Darlene Johnson’s Crocodile Dreaming (26mins) starred David Gulpilil as an elder with the power of magic. When his clan’s sacred stone is stolen and thrown into the river, Gulpilil must defy totemic crocodiles to retrieve it. He’s the perfect choice for such an ‘aqua man’, with his ultra-smooth skin and pitch-dark eyes like portals to another dimension. The film is a tour de force, including all the performances (Tom E Lewis is the antagonist); Darlene Johnson is one hell of a filmmaker—the disturbing scene of a crocodile’s revenge and another where one swims quietly above Gulpilil are testimony to that.

When the Natives Get Restless (28min), also from Adrian Wills, is a raw look at an Aboriginal housing estate in Dubbo, a lawless non-place. One resident says, “My life’s not worth living”; another despairs, “I hate Dubbo, hate the estate, hate what it’s done to me.” The point is made that in the city people only hear media versions of what goes on, like a recent riot depicted here. The film takes us beyond that. An interviewee says that ever since settlement black people have not been allowed to work. After you see how subtly and insidiously hardwired this attitude is, you realise this country hasn’t come very far. Here, aggressors come to seem more like victims and we are left shaken with the sense that people are still left to live like this in the 21st century.

Animation
The animation component of MIFF 2007 also contained some impressive Australian work. Thomas Fraser’s The Boy Who Loved the Rain (7mins) was a wonderful, impressionistic and atmospheric short, blending all sorts of morphing effects with nature’s rain and the unnatural snow of a TV set, while Susan Danta’s The Bronze Mirror (7mins), based on a Korean folk tale, related with wit, style and grace the story of simple folk bamboozled by their reflection in a mirror. The absence of these two films from the 2007 Melbourne International Animation Festival’s disappointing Australian Panorama, supposedly a showcase of our best recent local talent, is puzzling.

Of the internationals, The Adventures of John & John (William Bishop-Stevens, UK, 7mins) told the story of a couple of geeks who invent a machine that projects thoughts onto a screen. With its fearless crosscutting of variegated animation styles aligned to fierce, black humour and a self-deprecating tone, this one was a cut above. However it was matched by Gitanjali Rao’s Printed Rainbow (India, 16mins), about an elderly Indian lady living in a grey present-day dystopia dreaming of her former life via the multicoloured, psychedelic hues of her matchbox collection, souvenirs of the old country. Taking her cat along for a ride through inner space, she steps into the ultravivid matchbox scenes, perhaps never to return, willing a better life in a transcendental, beautifully rendered testament to the power of the imagination.

Lapsus (Juan Pablo Zaramella, Argentina, 4mins) was loads of fun, its blocky, black-and-white style milking maximum coverage from a nun whose body changes shape and form seemingly against her will. Yours Truly (Osbert Parker, UK, 7mins) was an outstanding noir: found objects from old films and magazines reanimate to provide twisted thrills (think Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid with a Blood Simple sensibility). Spain’s The Lady on the Threshold (Jorge Dayas, 14mins) was disturbing, an unearthly combination of secret sects and voluntary amputation enhanced by the deceptively passive quality of the animation.

Experimental
I also caught MIFF’s Experimental Shorts program. Nothing matched the highlight of last year’s session, in which two fat Germans wanked to Mozart. Instead we had Silver Poem (Cristiana Miranda, Brazil, 4mins), a riot of monochrome textures, scratchy film and a great soundtrack. Order-Re-Order (Barbara Doser, Hotstetter Kurt, Austria, 7mins) used video feedback to form all sorts of shapes from cellular blobs of light. It was like diving into a dissected brain to the accompaniment of phased, symphonic, loop-locked music. Stuart Gurden’s Harmonium (UK, 9mins) also played perceptual games, using visual and aural tape loops to create complex inter-rhythms that slowly resolved themselves into a Terry Riley piece overlaid with spoken text by Kurt Vonnegut. Harrachov (Matt Hulse, Joost Van Veen, P Esther Urlus, UK & Netherlands, 10mins) was old school, visually reminiscent of Nosferatu, all stop motion and time lapses, with its depiction of a machine assembling itself. That’s a clichéd theme, but the addition of shots of nature also assembling itself—clouds moving, water rippling—lent the film a timeless quality that was beguiling.

Finally, I’d like to note Paul Winkler’s Popkitsch (Australia, 17mins), a hellish mishmash of the tackiest cultural refuse: a midi soundtrack of “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” set to flipbook-style animations of kewpie dolls, photos of Hawaiian muscle hunks endlessly replayed, coagulating into a poptrash, shapeless blur…This film sums up the maddening quality of MIFF’s experimental shorts: that thrill of recognition tempered by utter, infuriating banality that makes you question your very will to live with the crushing, yet sometimes bizarrely uplifting, boredom of it all.

Melbourne International Film Festival, July 25-Aug 12, www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au

RealTime issue #81 Oct-Nov 2007 pg. 19

by Simon Sellars

Published in RealTime issue #80 Aug-Sept 2007.

AT THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL’S CAREERS IN ANIMATION FORUM, AN AUDIENCE MEMBER WANTED TO KNOW WHAT INSTITUTIONS LOOK FOR IN THEIR ENTRANCE INTERVIEWS. ROBERT STEPHENSON (VCA) SAID THAT AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE BODY’S MOVEMENT AND MECHANICS IS USEFUL. HE SUGGESTED WOULD-BE ANIMATORS ENROL IN LIFE-DRAWING CLASSES AND BRING A STORYBOARD TO THEIR INTERVIEW, EVEN IF THE APPLICANT HAS NEVER MADE A FILM, AS THIS MAY SUGGEST AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOW TO TELL A STORY. ANOTHER TIP: “DON’T COPY DRAWINGS OUT OF A ‘HOW TO ANIMATE’ BOOK.”

The panel also included animators David Blumenstein (Naked Fella) and Jim Kalogiratos (Tantalus) alongside educators Peter Allen (Holmesglen TAFE), and David Atkinson (RMIT). Atkinson said that while an applicant’s drawings might be naïve, it didn’t necessarily mean they’d be bad storytellers—their talent might be in writing and they might make good directors or producers. He reckoned his course could just about turn a mathematician into an animator, suggesting an applicant bring to the interview anything that gives the sense of them as a creative individual, such as visual diaries and journals; he said he’s even had applicants rap dance and serenade him with guitars.

Kalogiratos was quiet while Blumenstein was outspoken, referring to himself as a traditionalist with a 2D style. He expressed disgust for the hackwork animators have to do for studios to make a living, which contrasted with Allen, who said there are no opportunities for 2D work and that it’s best to concentrate on 3D industry and studio work. Stephenson disagreed, saying that the global children’s market is huge for 2D work—Australia just needs to refocus and become “one of the main players.” Allen acquiesced, indicating there is in fact a big market for 3D films that look like 2D; therefore animators may still need 2D skills in order to make the 3D simulation look ‘realistic.’ Of course, the animation course at Allen’s Holmesglen is more industry oriented than the VCA’s or RMIT’s, and it was this contrast that made for lively debate.

So, in essence, that’s what they’re teaching; now let’s see whether the results stacked up in MIAF’s Australian Panorama screening, which this year, we were told, was extended over two sessions as “there were so many outstanding entries.”

Emit (director Fergus Donald, 8’30min, 2007) told of a dead clock in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that ticks again after a space-probe crash. Unfortunately, a dull, derivative story overwhelmed the excellent digital technique. Even before MIAF, I felt I’d already had my fill of cutesy inanimate objects becoming reanimated and anthropomorphised to embark on a ‘rites of passage’ quest set to a Spielbergian score. In the even more pointless Ticketweavels (Caroline Huff, 2’15, 2005), a train ticket was invisibly shredded in stop motion set to a grinding industrial soundtrack. Steve Baker’s An Imaginary Life (5’00, 2007) may have won Tropfest, and the mix of animation and Super 8-style footage might be nicely done, but the story is incredibly hokey.

Brendan Cook’s compelling Heart’s A Mess (4’45, 2007) was a music-video clip for Goyte, with shape-shifting industrial creatures reminiscent of the marching hammers in Pink Floyd’s The Wall film. The Puppetmaker (Timothy Gaul, 4’00, 2006) could have descended into cliché—how many times have you seen a sad puppet yearning to break free of the strings—but instead was atmospheric, short and sweet. Rosalie Osman’s The Rabbit (6’00, 2006) was a silly tale of cats coming back to life to punish an animal beater, while JC Reyes’s Box (1’45, 2006) was a successful union of a short poem about forbidden pleasures with a textured animation style like a twisted children’s book. Thort Bubbles/ Dividing Cells (7’45, 2006) was another stop-motion Caroline Huff effort, overlong, dated and set to a pretentious voiceover (something to do with regeneration).
From Gold to Grapes: The Story of Landsborough From Gold to Grapes: The Story of Landsborough
From Gold to Grapes: The Story of Landsborough (Al MacInnes, 6’15, 2005) had a previous airing at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) in 2006; it features hand-drawn animation by young kids telling the wistful story of the adult narrators in the town of Landsborough. I loved the idea and the execution, and especially the use of real-life stories. It marked a refreshing change from The Luminary (Nicholas Kallincos, 9’15, 2005), also at MIFF 2006, which featured—yes, you guessed it— inanimate objects struggling with human feelings, in this case a light bulb falling in love with a moth. Elka Kerkhof’s Filled with Water (5’00, 2006) was about a female surfer coming across a giant TV in the street; a ballerina performs on the TV screen, the surfer falls through the screen, and they kiss passionately. It’s about feeling comfortable with same-sex leanings, but still, Kerkhof’s sense of narrative is head-scratching.

Carnivore Reflux (The People’s Republic of Animation, 7’00, 2006) was outstanding, with its bitingly witty poem about overeating, indulgence and flatulence set to a savage, ultra-vivid animation style like a cross between Terry Gilliam in his Python days and Marco Ferreri’s feature film La Grande Bouffe. Cry from the Past (6’00, 2007), by Susan Stamp (a VCA animation lecturer), was a lovely piece about the old-time Boydtown whalers, and the quirky whales themselves, with excellent technique, halfway between watercolour and animated charcoal. Fraught (Stephanie Brotchie, Chris Pahlow and Maia Terrell, 6’00, 2006) was also very good, drawing on real-life stories of embarrassing moments, with the interviewees overlaid with a variety of animation styles including surreal cut-outs, and shimmering line drawings.

..:: read the rest at RealTime.

Still from Sniffer.

by Simon Sellars

Originally published in RealTime issue #75 Oct-Nov 2006.

Although MIFF’s short film agenda was certainly exhaustive, my ‘best on ground’ was the Focus on Nordic Shorts selection, uniformly excellent and sharing the blackest humour, absolute self-deprecation and a savage willingness to torch convention. Sniffer (director Bobbie Peers, Norway, 2005, 12 mins) imagined what conformity, consumerism and desire would be like in a futuristic world with no gravity, minimal dialogue and a cast of overweight men—a metaphoric wonderland with layers of meaning unpeeling like subcutaneous tissue. Bawke (Hisham Zamam, Norway, 2005, 15 mins) used a Zinedine Zidane football card and a cluey kid to pack an emotional sucker punch about illegal immigrants, while The Last Farm (Runar Runarsson, Iceland, 2004, 15 mins) was a bitter, compelling psychodrama that neatly inverted George Sluizer’s The Vanishing.

The searing Roswell Enterprises (Janic F Heen, Norway, 2005, 10 mins) gave us 2 corporate wannabes playing one-upmanship in a high-tech men’s room before a job interview, only to find their cock sparring is being monitored and assessed. Me As Usual (Martin Zandvliet, Denmark, 2006, 8 mins) featured a self-obsessed guy in a dinner suit walking across a frozen field, talking to himself. A wide shot reveals he’s actually prattling on to another bloke wearing a costume moose head, while a nerdy cop with low self-esteem watches. Film ends. Take this as a commentary on the impossibility of wrapping up narratives in 8 minutes. I did.

Kids featured in the Focus on French selection, typified by the magic-realist For Interieur (Patrick Poubel, 2005, 10 mins) where a boy discovers his grandfather literally holds the world in his hands. Hard Lines (Benoit Tételin, 2005, 17 mins) laid bare a woman’s emotional past. Shot in black and white (and blue), it interspersed the woman’s work as a counsellor for abused children with angry confrontations with her mother. A Curtain Raiser (François Ozon, 2006, 30 mins) skewered Gallic relationships with sharp wit, nuanced acting and lush cinematography. “How un-French”, a character bemoans, “to complain about a woman being late. What sort of woman isn’t late, some kind of sexless monster…”

MIFF’s Accelerator program showcased emerging Australian and New Zealand talent. The films ranged from the brave—the semi-improvised The Dance (Sian Davies, Australia, 2005, 10 mins), about teen depression—to the tasteless—Nature’s Way (Jane Shearer, New Zealand, 2006, 10 mins), in which a young girl is graphically kidnapped and murdered in the forest, all so we can witness a pointless supernatural template framed by car-ad cinematography. The Last Chip (Heng Tang, Australia, 2005, 22 mins), funny and wise, featured a trio of overmade-up Vietnamese harridans determined to score big at the casino to fund ‘more abalone and birds’ nest soup’. Checkpoint (Ben Phelps, Australia, 2006, 11 mins) inventively connected the ‘War on Terror’ and ingrained Australian racism via the power of suggestion.

Of the Focus on Australian Shorts program, William (Eron Sheehan, 2006, 20 mins) was the pick, portraying an Indigenous magician and his strange magnetism for violence of all stripes—as institutionalised thuggery, as survival tactic, as mindless indulgence. The documentary My Brother Vinnie (Steven McGregor, Australia, 2006, 20 mins) recounts the experience of the actor Aaron Pedersen virtually raising his brother Vincent, who has mild cerebral palsy. The film’s simple power derives from Vinnie’s gentle charm and Aaron’s desire to finally let off steam and tell the story of their struggle to survive in foster homes. My Brother Vinnie won the festival’s Best Documentary Short Film award.

The animated films From Gold to Grapes (Al MacInnes, 2006, 6 mins) and Yallourn Story (Dave Jones, 2006, 6 mins) were also highlights. Both tell stories of forgotten Australian communities using the same technique—bringing local adults to life via local kids’ drawings, allied to voiceovers from the grownups themselves. This unpretentious device, bridging generations and essaying history as worthy of preservation in an age of the eternal present, put the rotoscoping bollocks of MIFF’s “hotly anticipated animated work”, A Scanner Darkly, to shame.

In fact, most of the Animated Shorts films kicked Scanner’s arse, especially Rabbit (Run Wrake, UK, 2005, 5 mins), a surreal headfuck told via cutouts of primary school readers—as if Dick, Jane and Spot had been sucked into the freaky fantasies of devil children. The Wraith of Cobble Hill (Adrian Parrish, USA, 2006, 16 mins), a subtle claymation about conflicted youth, was shot in grainy black and white. Other notables included the watercoloured cannibalism fable, The True Story of Sawney Beane (Elizabeth Hobbs, UK, 2005, 11 mins) and the computer-generated Astronauts (Matthew Walker, UK, 2005, 9 mins)—like an English Dark Star. Funny Pets (Ryuji Masuda, Japan, 2005, 6 mins) delivered a tripped-out parallel universe made from queasy CGI, where a Betty Boop-like bimbo keeps 2 dumb alien pets that bend space and time completely by accident. MIFF awarded it Best Animated Short Film. Daydream (Yoo Jinee, South Korea, 2005, 13 mins) was simply beautiful, using fantasy to tell of the director’s love for his disabled daughter.

The Documentary Shorts were just as compelling. Sleep City (Enrique Rodrigues & Moncho Fernandez, Spain, 2005, 10 mins), a Ballardian meditation on urban psychopathology, artfully cropped its frames to exclude all humans—a train without passengers, a fairground starting up by itself, ghostly escalators looping for eternity—the technological landscape, a kind of AI, becomes the star attraction. Last Men Standing (Sasha Maja Djurkovic, UK, 2005, 17 mins) tells of the Tower Colliery coal mine in Wales, bought by miners with their severance pay. As the miners proudly speak of their dignity and their pride in the mine, we cut to smacked-out, teenage glue sniffers, unlikely (by their own admission) to live another few years. Will the mines save the kids from the glue? Or are these kids choosing glue over going down the mines? It doesn’t seem much of a choice and the power of this film is assured in the final shot, as a block of flats is detonated and the white smoke bleaches the screen to nothing.

The sheer range of the documentary shorts proved the creaky adage that truth is a billion times stranger, messier and more jarring than fiction, especially when too many of the Fiction Shorts relied on bog-standard melodrama, with characters learning inevitable emotional truths in inevitably empty landscapes. Still, A Supermarket Love Song (Daniel Outram, UK, 2005, 13 mins) sympathetically portrayed a horny old man’s lust for a bored, reprobate girl; Antonio’s Breakfast (Daniel Mulloy, UK, 2005, 16 mins), about a streetwise kid looking after his crippled father, was tough, edgy and full of steel-grey urban vibes (and was awarded a special prize by the MIFF judges); while Cotopaxi (Zack Copping, UK, 2005, 13 mins) was an acerbic, hilarious mockumentary about a guy who tries to rescue his sister from a hippy commune, only to succumb himself.

Unfortunately, Experimental Shorts was a real snorefest. Being a Chris Marker fan, I had hopes for the La Jetée homage, Beta Test (George Drivas, Germany, 2006, 14 mins), but it failed with its sterile fidelity to Marker’s original, including Identikit off-screen whispering. Too bad Marker’s intelligence wasn’t Xeroxed as well. However, I woke up when Brothers, Let Us Be Merry (Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 2006, 1 min) came on—hard not to when 2 naked, bored-looking men fill the screen, vigorously wanking to the thundering strains of Mozart’s Zaide.

Go to www.melbournefilmfestival. com.au/2006_festival/shorts for details of other award winners.

Melbourne International Film Festival, July 26-Aug 13

Alice et Moi, dir. Micha Wold

‘Power without Punchlines’ by Simon Sellars. Originally published in RealTime magazine, #68 Aug-Sep 2005.

The St Kilda Film Festival did not get off to an auspicious start. Opening night was supposed to showcase the cream of Australia’s top 100 shorts but the session was characterised by tired scenarios and an almost total inability on the part of the filmmakers to fully examine the implications of the various storylines. Soft writing, soft acting, the soft option – it all lessens the blow. We were also treated to ‘gimmick filmmaking’, whereby the demands of a sponsor shoehorn the content into lame outcomes, like the Micro Movie promotion. Sponsored by Siemens, this was really a promotion for their latest phone, which can shoot a minute or so of video – there was a competition for the best 90-second film made with it, and that can’t be healthy for Australian short-film making, already afflicted by the accursed punchline disease (call it the ‘Tropfest Syndrome’). Ninety-second films are all punchline and that’s sad.

But what do I know? I’m a critic; I’ve never made a film. I know what I like, though, and that’s why I was smitten by the festival’s International section, especially the Aspen and Interfilm components. The Aspen program, direct from Colorado, featured highlights from the 2004 and 2005 Aspen ShortsFest, and kicked off with Bill Plympton’s animation Guard Dog (2004). You can’t really go wrong with ‘Plymptoons’ – the man has a singularly warped worldview that magnifies the most innocuous of details and turns them into outrageous, off-centre treatises on life and the universe. In Plympton’s world there are no beautiful people, just grotesque, pinched shells of human beings meeting extreme fates in a very vivid fashion. Guard Dog was no exception – long live this man and his nasty sense of humour.

The best of the rest included Rob Pearlstein’s Our Time is Up (2004), in which a psychologist discovers he has 6 weeks to live. Life is literally too short for him to listen to his whining patients, and he watches in glee as one fruitloop after another implodes, driven batty by the rising bile of their neuroses. Underground (2004), by Aimee Lagos and Kristin Dehnert, was a rip-roaring cat-and-mouse tale played out in the dank subway of some unnamed city. Two heavies pursue a woman from train to train; she’s totally wound up, as these men clearly mean her harm. This tense buildup results in a jaw-dropping finale, a punchline of sorts, but one that’s guaranteed to smack you about and leave you punch drunk.

The other Aspen notable was John Harden’s La Vie d’un Chien (The Life of a Dog; 2004), a silly homage to/parody of Chris Marker’s legendary time-travel photo-roman, La Jetee. Here, a scientist invents a potion that turns people into canines for 24 hours; human-dog cults subsequently spring up around the world. There were a few bestiality jokes but the real fun for the filmmakers seemed to lie in aping Marker’s style. But the grafting of a tacky sci fi storyline onto a source as sublime and metaphysical as Marker’s seems pretty indiscriminate and a tad disrespectful (as the director acknowledges; “To Chris Marker – sorry for all this”, the credits read). Still, you’d be hard pushed to find an Aussie filmmaker who’d dare to reference such a source, so my final verdict is: tacky Marker is better than no Marker at all.

Interfilm Berlin was something else again, presenting explosive, affecting scenarios with maximum impact – fully integrated units that totally transcended the limitations of budget or the short-form medium. The program was a standalone concept entitled Confrontations — a feature of each Interfilm festival starting in 1999, when right-wing street violence was on the rise in Germany and the Yugoslavian civilian war was peaking. The program was designed as a response to this global wave of confrontation – inviting filmmakers to essay their thoughts on the New World Mood – and it’s just as relevant today, with the War on Terror ensuring that we all continue to bite the bullet.

There was nary a punchline in the entire bunch. Some that stood out: Lara Foot-Newton’s And there in the dust (2004), detailing the growing malaise of child rape in South Africa but avoiding graphic sensationalism or empty sympathy with stunning use of stop motion and narration. Gabriela Monroy’s Un Viaje (A Trip; 2003), a Mexican film about a man taking his autistic son for a ride on the subway, resulted in a hallucinatory journey for all concerned. Soyons Attentifs (Beware; 2003), by Thiery Sabban, used a similar structure to the aforementioned Underground, heightening the tension inherent in the urban jungle, then defusing it with a goodly dose of humanism. Another highlight was Micha Wold’s Alice et Moi (Alice and I; 2004), a Belgian film about a guy on a road trip with his nagging aunts, gradually losing the plot as tries to cope with not only his overbearing, old-school relatives but also a split with his thoroughly modern girlfriend communicated via mobile phone. There were mad skills in this one – everything from acting to cinematography to writing, each crewmember at the absolute top of their game. Even the Interfilm shorts that didn’t quite work must still be applauded for their willingness to innovate, like Pascal Lievre’s L’Axe Du Mal (Axis of Evil; 2003), featuring Dubya’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech sung to the tune of a cheesy, 1980s Jermaine Jackson/Pia Zadora song. It was hard to see the point, but at least it raised a laugh.

After, I met some Aussie filmmakers and we were all bowled over by the quality of the Interfilm program. Everyone was inspired to make something of similar quality, and that’s the real value of the St Kilda Film Festival. Sharing the vision of filmmakers overseas is a golden opportunity – especially at the grassroots level of short-film making – and we can only hope it impacts on the increasingly insular, out-of-touch Australian filmmaking experience.

Melatonin, photo: Kirsten Bradley

by Simon Sellars

Originally published in RealTime Magazine, #62, August/September 2004.

I’m told “sleep music” is a new genre: music to listen to while dozing off. Emboldened by this, I visited Bus Gallery with palpable excitement. I’ve often yearned for a club that, instead of inducing forward motion through hyper-accelerated beats, piped in music to induce catatonia. Imagine such a place: neck a few drinks, kick back with custom-made “sleep music” through state-of-the-art headphones and drift into oblivion. Minus the booze, that was exactly the set-up for the Melatonin sound installation.

Melatonin curator Lawrence English invited Australian and international sound practitioners to explore their personal experience of how dream states can be warped by sounds bleeding in from the outside world. The idea of making art out of this symbiosis thrilled me. Only recently I dreamt I was a trapeze artist, accompanied by that irritating traditional circus theme that everyone knows and hates, only to awake and find the tune blaring from the TV. Just as I was about to put my head in the mouth of a lion…

I know melatonin is a natural hormone secreted by the pineal gland that helps the body to regulate sleep, so I arrived at Bus eager for my dose, only to find 2 people occupying the beds. Apparently, they’d been in stasis for the best part of an hour and weren’t stirring. I chatted to a woman also waiting. It was a miserable Melbourne afternoon, and having braved the elements we were both keen to lie down and delay our journey home for as long as possible.

Finally, the bed hogs roused and we took their place. “Sweet dreams”, my new friend bid me, but I just couldn’t shake the fantasy that we were long-haul astronauts submitting to hypersleep — and everyone knows there are no dreams in hypersleep. But from there on in it was all crickets and insects, Eno-like piano tinklings, disembodied voices and sweet female lullabies, fragments of conversation overlaid with clattering kitchen utensils. I remember laughter, rain, jet engines — great washes of sound peaking and troughing, punctuated by jagged violin scrapings. There were images associated with these sonic properties, but they are less easy to recall (lacking distinct visuals, it felt like I was reading minds, free falling in other people’s inner space). Then the world of the gallery knitted back into place, but the transition wasn’t dissonant — it was a seamless interlocking of worlds.

I checked my watch: I’d been under for 45 minutes. I was now groggy, but invigorated, like awakening from deep slumber. My acquaintance had vanished, which was a pity; I wanted to gauge her reaction, although I was honestly having difficulty remembering if she was real or part of my dreamscape.

Happily, I walked outside and there she was, staring at the drab sky. Lost for words, I stammered: “That was…uh…incredible”, then followed her gaze to the clouds. But when I looked again, she was no longer there.

Melatonin-Meditations on Sound in Sleep, curator Lawrence English, Bus Gallery, Melbourne, May 23-29, 2004