Animated Encounters 2012 – Competition Screenings (Day 1)
It’s that time of year again, when the town of Bristol gets a li’l bit more cultural with the presence of the Encounters festival. Actually, it’s a couple months earlier than the time of year we’ve been used to, and the stretches of blue sky and sunshine as I head over to get my press pass do make a nice change from the chilly November air of festivals past.
I don’t think I would’ve imagined a scenario where I’d be visiting the festival in any kind of press capacity when I first moved here over six years ago. Back then I wasn’t completely burned out on only writing vaingloriously about my own work and the impulse to extend the subject matter to other practitioners and various cultural inspirations had yet to kick in. Between then and now the festival has taken on different forms over the years –inspirational (as an audience member), aspirational (as a fledgling indie animator) and, finally, validating (as someone who finally got a film in last year). Now the internalised, self-invented pressure is off it’s nice to have the opportunity to revert back to my first role, sans the student part.
Obviously my focus for Skwigly is the animation strand, Animated Encounters, which largely takes place at Bristol’s Arnolfini, a place I frequent to spend inordinate amounts of money on both coffee and coffee table books (their bookshop this week is fittingly stocked with an extra batch of animation-themed literature to mark the occasion and destroy my credit rating). The first impressions of the festival are immediately strong, with a fabulous display of a handful of Aardman sets, props and posed characters. Charmingly shonky as it is, I do get a nice little warm buzz seeing the mammoth orange spaceship from “A Grand Day Out”, one of the more rewound VHS tapes of my young’un days.
The first two events to grab my interest are no-brainers, being the first two of the six thematic competition screenings the next few days will more or less revolve around. These ordinarily have the most pull, where filmmakers and animation fans alike congregate to either feel awed, inadequate or possibly a little resentful when films somewhat lacking seem to have been slipped in (that last one spoken by a filmmaker very well aware it could have applied to my own last year). As it is the strengths of both screenings far outweigh the duds, with the first “Feathers & Fur” – one of two nature-themed showcases – offering an array of both technical and storytelling competence. The variety of styles came from a number of different backgrounds, including design (such as Lesley Barnes’s simple but lusciously-executed “Apple” and two Terry Gilliam-meets-mograph pieces “How Futile It All Is” by Natalia Grzebyk and Jo Lawrence’s “Barnet Fair”) and illustration (Edmund Jansons’s “International Father’s Day” boasting fabulously effective colours). Standout stop-motion work included the pleasingly-grim “Pasty Child” (George Tymvios) and the Evan Derushie’s “The Fox & The Chickadee”, with animated performance timed superbly to dialogue somewhat let down by hammy voice overacting, which would admittedly be less of a concern to the younger audience it’s presumably targeting. Also, from a programming perspective, the similarity of its premise to the film that preceded it (Lena Von Dohlen’s sweetly amusing 2D animation “The Little Bird & The Leaf”) didn’t help. There were also a couple of mixed-media offerings, combining animation with live-action puppetry such as the good-natured “Colosse” (Yves Geleyn) and Jost Althoff’s “Ballast”, whose main protagonist inspired a nostalgic craving for Softmints. “Oh Willy…” (Emma de Swaef and Mark James), currently taking the festival circuit by storm, starts off with a warmhearted premise (a man returning to his naturist roots following his mother’s death), misleadingly teeters on the edge of saccharine before tipping the other way completely into being out-and-out disconcerting, which is exactly my cup of tea; Midst the murmers of audible audience discomfort its conclusion, whether going for symbolism or bare-faced weirdness, saw me grinning delightedly. It’s like a cross between Maurice Sendak and a half-repressed abuse memory. But, y’know, in a sweet way.
It’s a film that would have been just as much at home in the second screening, “Trials Of Life”, which makes the noticeable shift from animal misadventure to human turmoil. This selection covers the (presumably quite significant) percentage of animators and directors who, on some level, use their work as a means of personal catharsis, alongside those who take fascination in the multitudinous foibles of those around them. Beginning with Eamonn o’Neill’s “I’m Fine Thanks”, a tale of a tortured social misfit which made me both chuckle and feel bad for doing so at the same time. Not a million miles away thematically (though it doesn’t seem so from the outset) was Ainslee Henderson’s “I Am Tom Moody”, a very nicely-done stop-motion dissection of struggling with self-confidence. Regina Pessoa’s NFB short “Kali The Little Vampire” makes the dangerous choice of taking on the inordinately overused theme of, well, vampires, but the design style of the characters and fantastic digital pencil shading gives it a tremendous visual edge. Joseph Pierce’s instantly identifiable style of embellished rotoscoping is still in effect with his latest short “The Pub” and suits the film’s premise well. Though far from mainstream, it carries with it a smattering of extra relatability than his previous films “Stand Up” and “A Family Portrait”, extending the observational nature of his chosen method to more of an ensemble piece. As it is, the three would make a fine trilogy, though whether or not the visual motif will carry on being used beyond this film will be interesting to see. The true charmer of the screening is, unusually, the film I’m the most familiar with, being Timothy Reckart’s stop-motion NFTS film “Head Over Heels”. Usually by the third viewing of a film the initial appeal starts to wane, but in this case the understated nature of the central couple’s struggle to relate to one another calls for repeat viewing to pick up on its wealth of little details, while having fun with the invented physical laws of the limbo they occupy.
While I can’t say the screenings went off entirely without a hitch – one of the more anticipated films never manifested itself and the all-French and very dialogue-heavy “De riz ou d’Arménie” was presented without subtitles (whether this was an artistic decision or not is hard to determine as the story itself was fairly comprehendable, albeit far less effecting than it might have been if we could relate to the characters on a conversational level), the quality of the aforementioned standout offerings certainly gave a feeling of bang for one’s buck.