More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
3 December (completed 7 December)
This is the second part of a review of Box of Delights, a collection of short animated films, as shown at Bath Film Festival 2013 (@BathFilm) and thanks to a complimentary ticket from the festival
The first part of this review is here (the first five films out of nine)
Inukshuk (2008)
It should not be imagined that curating a programme such as this is any more straightforward than deciding which poems should go in a collection, and in which order, or programming a concert, but I suspect that this film was not best placed here, after the vibrancy of Nicolas et Guillemette (the last film reviewed here). Kimberley Ballard's account of it makes it sound as though it should, nevertheless, have made an impact, but the impact on an adult watching Box of Delights is almost bound to be different from that of a youngster :
On an enchanted block of ice in the Polar region, an Inuk man and a naughty polar bear watch their world transform as they peer into the dark sea. One of the greatest shorts of recent years, Camille-Elvis Thery conjures his landscape in frost-tinged black and white, and blankets the sublime tale in a string of dreamlike images.
Reading this again afterwards, and at a distance, I have the feeling that I should have been amazed by Inukshuk - one can ponder, with Wikipedia's help, on the meaning of the title (maybe the polar bear, or the whale, was the Inukshuk ?) - but I know that I was not, partly because it did not bear comparison with the world created by the previous film. Partly, though, because of the sketchy nature of the animation, where the sun is just a big circle with lines around the edge, and the bear laughing at the man's stupidity just felt like Entre Deux Miettes. Even the surprise at the end of the true nature of the surface on which they were felt like too little, too late, though for some it might have been transformational.
Rabbit Rabbit (2006)
This is a short (two-minute), quick film of moving images following each other in a mirror, punctuated by three duels (the last with unexpected results, which made me think of bullet-time and The Matrix (1999)) - it is Rabbit Rabbit, because the starting-point for a series of replications and reflections is a stylized rabbit and its mirror-image, which, at times (and probably not just incidentally), resemble a Rorschach test.
Kimberley Ballard is spot on to say that 'its kaleidoscopic cast of rabbits will leave you reeling', which is because it is not just a matter of multiplication, but deft movement, too. A film that works on many layers, suggesting the human population explosion (somehow, rabbits are known for their fecundity), opposing forces, and a world beyond the superficial. Nearly halfway through, the polarity changes, and all is made new again in this charming work with its slurping soundtrack, a little like someone in slippers dragging his or her heels...
Lifeline (2009)
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
These words by William Blake, which were only published posthumously, do not sum up this film of morphing shapes and creatures, but they are the sort of inspiration for the daughter whom we are shown to try to share a perspective with her father : the title is clearly not meant to be overlooked, with its implication that this is not a casual slideshow of the natural world, but a crucial attempt.
The father does not look as though he can take in beauty, and he appears deeply depressed (or at least to have cares, burdens and woes). In Samuel Beckettt's play Endgame, there is a mention of someone who can only see ashes, and these lines*, too, could have been written for the grey man whom we see. The lively, flowing worlds of cosmic colours that she brings before him seem like encapsulations of creation in all its dimensions, resembling icons, mandalas and illuminated manuscripts all at once. Somehow, we feel that the father cannot fail to respond**.
Flatworld (1997)
One cannot help being reminded a little of Pratchett's Discworld by the title, though Flatland is a hundred years its senior, but none of this helps as an approach to this piece.
In a film of 28 minutes' duration, Daniel Greaves (who directed Rabbit Rabbit - please see above) has produced something as long as the first five in Box of Delights put together, so it necessarily has a different dynamic and build from the other items screened. It allows us not to understand everything all at once, such as what is being done to the road to repair it, and Greaves wisely does not stick so rigidly to things being two-dimensional that everything is flat.
What he does neatly predict, though, is the flat-screen t.v., which I was getting confused with the fish-tank (because both are hanging on the wall). Just when I was getting excited about the idea that a fish-tank could double as a t.v., that is what Greaves gives me, in a world where a remote-control can change reality :
In the same year as this film, director Michael Haneke talks about the moment at Cannes when the audience applauded when one of the two youthful torturers had been killed - until the other picks up such a device and rewinds what seemed to be normal, live action to remedy the mistake that led to the death of his accomplice. Maybe just coincidence ?
In any case, when the man, his cat and his fish can all enter a colourful world in three dimensions***, courtesy of the t.v. channels, suddenly their world is thrown into relief, the real adventure (rather than the rivalry between the pets) in under way, begins, and the energy is infectious. The other work had drive, and it informs this one, with clever twists and turns, as the man battles to clear his name when mistaken for a burglar, with more than the bag of money at stake. Very entertaining and imaginative !
End-notes
* 'I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look ! There ! All that rising corn ! And there ! Look ! The sails of the herring fleet ! All that loveliness ! (Pause.) He'd snatch away his hand and go back into his corner. Appalled. All he had seen was ashes. (Pause.) He alone had been spared.'
** Unless this should be an elaborate metaphor for the supposed wonders of ECT.
*** The less literal suggestion may be that the two-dimensional world imprisons life in a somewhat uninspiring way, because there is not the will and desire to break out of it into one of possibility, potential and freedom. Hints of Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) ?
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
Showing posts with label Kimberley Ballard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kimberley Ballard. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Monday, 2 December 2013
Turkish delight I
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 December
This is the first part of a review of Box of Delights, a collection of short animated films, as shown at Bath Film Festival 2013 (@BathFilm) and thanks to a complimentary ticket from the festival
Box of Delights (programme 2), though it takes its title from him, really has nothing to do with John Masefield, and the festival’s film note says :
Although chosen for children, these films appeal to all ages as they summon an assortment of charming characters whilst exploring themes of identity, culture and friendship*.
It is well known from as far back as Greek tragedy, and the ways in which use of the chorus can be dramatic irony, through Chaucer’s ambiguous pilgrims and the punning of Shakespeare that things can operate on more than one level, and the best of these short films (though the longest, at 28 minutes, is much longer than the shortest, which is 2 minutes) do that.
Office Noise (2009)
For younger members of the audience, this film may just have operated (superficially) on the level of a clumsily large animal (elephant), where, as with Tom and Jerry, the hurts are momentary and creatures passing through walls make a hole their shape : in fact, we have a fall, and some bandages, but very little notion of severe or lasting damage. (I have never been in a huge open-plan office with free-standing padded dividers, but we all think that we have from such sources as The Matrix (1999), or even After Hours (1985) – conveniently, here, the place is deserted.)
The dynamic of the film, though, is a little tenuous, with irritating colleague (with an ingressive trunk) becoming regret at irritating colleague being injured, but coming back just as irritating – a lot of effort not to say very much, except as (somewhat dark) entertainment. (Somewhat oddly, an 'Acting Consultant' is credited at the end.)
Between Two Crumbs (2005)
This English title may not be a brilliantly idiomatic translation of Entre Deux Miettes. In any case, Sylvain Ollier, in the entry on Vimeo, says ‘This is my student animated short film, made in 2005 at the Emile Cohl School (France)’.
As Kimberley Ballard’s write-up says, the film ‘seamlessly mixes live action with animation’ in this five-minute short. As to what comfort adults with an experience of bullying can take from it, except that there is always a nemesis in someone bigger than the bully, I do not know, but the embodiment of the minute creatures at its heart is rather wonderful.
What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks (2009)
The quotation from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet may be lost on some of the audience, although famous, but the film puns on the idea of light breaking into pieces, no doubt partly influenced by the wave / particle duality by means of which science seeks to explain its properties.
Sarah Wickens, on the page for the film at Laughing Squid, is said to have ‘created the beautiful stop-motion short film titled What Light (Through Yonder Window Breaks) [Note the added parenthesis] for her 2009 Masters in Animation graduation project at the Royal College of Art in London.
It is a complete break (no pun intended !) with what went before, because the credits simply acknowledge the starring (no pun intended !) role played by The Sun. What that means is amplified by this quotation on the web-site :
I like to experiment with combining techniques and finding new ways to make animation; in my graduation film I use windows and stencils to create animation from sunlight as it travels around my bedroom.
The film speaks for itself (available via the link above), but just the row of five photographs with the sea in black and white and a jetty centrally reaching out into it show an artistic mind occupies this space. What is created may very well fit in with Mercutio’s equally famous (interrupted) speech in the play about Queen Mab, for example :
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep
Akbar’s Cheetah (1999)
This film, according to Kimberley Ballard’s description, is one that comes from an ecopolitical agenda, and I wonder whether, in consequence, its story-line about the Emperor Akbar (1542 – 1605) verges on a racist account. For the emperor’s Wikipedia entry suggests that he understood cheetahs rather better, if he was, indeed, an animal trainer and hunted with and even trained cheetahs, whereas the animation has him acceding to be a prisoner in his (modest) palace to let such creatures rule the roost.
Apart from suggestions of breasts and genitals early on, the film is quite a stylized and relaxed one for this audience, even if the figures, particularly the baby, have a lardy quality. However, it drifted through its course relatively predictably, and just gave the impression that Akbar was rather naive and out of touch, whereas British history of around this era (maybe before – probably the reign of one of the Henrys) shows that control and importation of animals even at this stage was so advanced that the Tower of London’s White Tower was a royal zoo, which is not really consistent with this painted fable.
Nicolas and Guillemette (2008)
Just as What Light, not least as the work of an artist, seemed poles apart from the first two shorts, so this animation is engaging, and charmingly inventive, built, as it seemed to me***, around or even because of the lovely berceuse that we first hear via the musical-box (actually, quite a sophisticated one, with a tape of hinged, punched cards, such as a pianola uses).
The music, composed by Mami Chan and Norman Bambi, is utterly of a piece with the visuals, and they are credited, along with director Virginie Taravel, with the singing voices that we hear. As with Wickens’ film, no description can really do justice to this piece, although Kimberley Ballard rightly talks of ‘childlike glee’, and ‘a whirl of vibrant colours’, and the closing apotheosis is a very pleasant surprise, and, by transcending circumstance, a fitting close.
Continued here (with the remaining four films)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
2 December
This is the first part of a review of Box of Delights, a collection of short animated films, as shown at Bath Film Festival 2013 (@BathFilm) and thanks to a complimentary ticket from the festival
Box of Delights (programme 2), though it takes its title from him, really has nothing to do with John Masefield, and the festival’s film note says :
Although chosen for children, these films appeal to all ages as they summon an assortment of charming characters whilst exploring themes of identity, culture and friendship*.
It is well known from as far back as Greek tragedy, and the ways in which use of the chorus can be dramatic irony, through Chaucer’s ambiguous pilgrims and the punning of Shakespeare that things can operate on more than one level, and the best of these short films (though the longest, at 28 minutes, is much longer than the shortest, which is 2 minutes) do that.
Office Noise (2009)
For younger members of the audience, this film may just have operated (superficially) on the level of a clumsily large animal (elephant), where, as with Tom and Jerry, the hurts are momentary and creatures passing through walls make a hole their shape : in fact, we have a fall, and some bandages, but very little notion of severe or lasting damage. (I have never been in a huge open-plan office with free-standing padded dividers, but we all think that we have from such sources as The Matrix (1999), or even After Hours (1985) – conveniently, here, the place is deserted.)
The dynamic of the film, though, is a little tenuous, with irritating colleague (with an ingressive trunk) becoming regret at irritating colleague being injured, but coming back just as irritating – a lot of effort not to say very much, except as (somewhat dark) entertainment. (Somewhat oddly, an 'Acting Consultant' is credited at the end.)
Between Two Crumbs (2005)
This English title may not be a brilliantly idiomatic translation of Entre Deux Miettes. In any case, Sylvain Ollier, in the entry on Vimeo, says ‘This is my student animated short film, made in 2005 at the Emile Cohl School (France)’.
As Kimberley Ballard’s write-up says, the film ‘seamlessly mixes live action with animation’ in this five-minute short. As to what comfort adults with an experience of bullying can take from it, except that there is always a nemesis in someone bigger than the bully, I do not know, but the embodiment of the minute creatures at its heart is rather wonderful.
What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks (2009)
The quotation from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet may be lost on some of the audience, although famous, but the film puns on the idea of light breaking into pieces, no doubt partly influenced by the wave / particle duality by means of which science seeks to explain its properties.
Sarah Wickens, on the page for the film at Laughing Squid, is said to have ‘created the beautiful stop-motion short film titled What Light (Through Yonder Window Breaks) [Note the added parenthesis] for her 2009 Masters in Animation graduation project at the Royal College of Art in London.
It is a complete break (no pun intended !) with what went before, because the credits simply acknowledge the starring (no pun intended !) role played by The Sun. What that means is amplified by this quotation on the web-site :
I like to experiment with combining techniques and finding new ways to make animation; in my graduation film I use windows and stencils to create animation from sunlight as it travels around my bedroom.
The film speaks for itself (available via the link above), but just the row of five photographs with the sea in black and white and a jetty centrally reaching out into it show an artistic mind occupies this space. What is created may very well fit in with Mercutio’s equally famous (interrupted) speech in the play about Queen Mab, for example :
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep
Akbar’s Cheetah (1999)
This film, according to Kimberley Ballard’s description, is one that comes from an ecopolitical agenda, and I wonder whether, in consequence, its story-line about the Emperor Akbar (1542 – 1605) verges on a racist account. For the emperor’s Wikipedia entry suggests that he understood cheetahs rather better, if he was, indeed, an animal trainer and hunted with and even trained cheetahs, whereas the animation has him acceding to be a prisoner in his (modest) palace to let such creatures rule the roost.
Apart from suggestions of breasts and genitals early on, the film is quite a stylized and relaxed one for this audience, even if the figures, particularly the baby, have a lardy quality. However, it drifted through its course relatively predictably, and just gave the impression that Akbar was rather naive and out of touch, whereas British history of around this era (maybe before – probably the reign of one of the Henrys) shows that control and importation of animals even at this stage was so advanced that the Tower of London’s White Tower was a royal zoo, which is not really consistent with this painted fable.
Nicolas and Guillemette (2008)
Just as What Light, not least as the work of an artist, seemed poles apart from the first two shorts, so this animation is engaging, and charmingly inventive, built, as it seemed to me***, around or even because of the lovely berceuse that we first hear via the musical-box (actually, quite a sophisticated one, with a tape of hinged, punched cards, such as a pianola uses).
The music, composed by Mami Chan and Norman Bambi, is utterly of a piece with the visuals, and they are credited, along with director Virginie Taravel, with the singing voices that we hear. As with Wickens’ film, no description can really do justice to this piece, although Kimberley Ballard rightly talks of ‘childlike glee’, and ‘a whirl of vibrant colours’, and the closing apotheosis is a very pleasant surprise, and, by transcending circumstance, a fitting close.
Continued here (with the remaining four films)
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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