EIFF 2016: McLaren Award: New British Animation 2
Named after Stirling-born experimental animator Norman McLaren, the second selection of award nominated films were played in front of a packed audience. As in the previous day’s shorts, there was a great range of films, with the crowd pleasing, Simon’s Cat – Off to the Vet selected as the overall winner.
A Love Story
Dir. Anushka Naanayakkara
This tender film opened the afternoon’s screening. Delicately stop-motion animated in wool, this NFTS graduate film tells of a relationship between two wool heads in a womb-like fabric setting. The two characters continually sew themselves together despite their negative qualities showing.
The Last Day
Dir. Muqing Shu
Following the theme of love and relationships, The Last Day is an ECA graduate film about an old woman’s memories of life with her late husband. The film has a very sweet and affectionate attitude, and separates the present reality from the past using different mediums. The reality is shown in trembling stop-motion, while the memories and imagined elements appear in fluid, clear digital traditional animation.
No Place Like Home
Dir. Cat Bruce
A second entry from the Scottish Film Talent Network, No Place Like Home tells the story of a woman being evicted from her rural, self-sufficient home. She resists the change throughout the film and is ultimately unable to adapt. Another stop motion film, I wonder why it’s such a popular medium among students and non-commercial film makers?
I’m Good With Plants
Dir. Thomas Harnett O’Meara
This stop-motion student film from RCA tells the part-dreary, part-wild story of a man with a growing attachment to the sex chat-line worker that he calls every day, and his absurd plan to steal a plant from the office he works at. The style of the models, and the way that they are lit and shot feels very much like architectural mockups, and the feeling of the miniature world really suits the telescope POV shots. I think this short felt really distinct from the others, simply due to it’s colour grading, which was generally cooler and brighter than most of the others, giving a removed, objective feel.
Record/Record
Dir. Robert Duncan
Another completely new and unique animation technique from an ECA graduate. Record/Record uses variations on looping animation, with the trails of the previous few frames always flowing backwards from the present frame. The technique used started off as frame-by-frame drawn animation, but the frames were then individually cut out of paper with a scalpel, and when each drawing was shot, it was then moved down a level of glass, and so on, to create the trailing effect. I felt that although this film had a similarly unique technique to Illusions, it worked a bit better in this instance because the technique tied nicely into the themes of the film.
Lethe
Dir. Kat Michaelides
A stylish film from the NFTS, Lethe is a moral tale about two best friends and their dog, who discover a pond in the woods that causes memory loss upon contact. The film is mostly grounded in digital traditional animation, though some photographed models form around the pool. So in the world of this film, the stylised painted backgrounds are ‘normal’, and the photographed elements are paranormal. There are shifts in animation quality as is a common problem in student projects, but I thought that this was one of the best of the afternoon’s lot.
Love in Idleness
Dir. Kim Noce
After Neck and Neck the previous day, this was the second of two Shakespeare adaptations by Mew Lab, this time centred on Titania and Bottom’s relationship in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The film isn’t telling a chunk of the story, it’s all about the deluded (under the enchantment of a love potion) sexual interaction between Titania and Bottom. The drawing style and animation technique (charcoal drawings erased and redrawn) was reminiscent of the early animated film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and although it was well executed in my opinion the ‘primitive’ drawing style is limiting and hard to engage with.
Roger Ballen’s Theatre of Apparitions
Dir. Emma Calder, Ged Haney
Based on the work of photographer Roger Ballen, this non-narrative film is a collection of short nightmares featuring spirits, monsters, and mutilated people ripping each other apart and having sex with one another, introduced by the photographer himself(in photo cut-out form). The figures in the nightmares are digital cutouts made out of distorted photos, that look like deteriorated old medical imaging. Pearly Oyster Productions in Brixton were commissioned by Roger Ballen to make the film, which ties into his upcoming book of the same name.
The Alan Dimension
Dir. Jac Climch
The last of 6 NFTS films this year, The Alan Dimension is one of the few films that were outright comedies. A middle-aged man strains his wife’s patience by obsessively studying the cosmic factors that lead him to predict upcoming life events, such as what he will be having for breakfast. Like it’s peer film, The Wrong End of the Stick, The Alan Dimension uses digital traditional animation with photographic backgrounds, although in this case they are miniature sets, rather than real places. The drawing and animation is a little rocky in parts, but making an 8 minute student film is not small feat. Especially a good one.
Mr.Madila
Dir. Rory Waudby-Tolley
This RCA graduation film is a very funny mock(?)umentary in which the animator interviews a spiritual healer. There are a few live action moments of the animator on the phone with Mr.Madila, but otherwise the interview segments have a crude, weird animated style that cuts and changes as the voices correct themselves and change subject mid-sentence. The style of the film reminded me of the current YouTube trend where people animate to audio clips from podcasts and let’s plays.
To Build a Fire
Dir. Fx Goby
The final film of this year’s selection, and the second one to be crowdfunded via Indiegogo, To Build a Fire commemorates the centenary of writer Jack London’s death, and is based on one of his short stories. A trapper and his Husky set out from one camp to another in hostile polar conditions. Beautifully designed, and animated with digital traditional animation in a lineless style, the film was certainly one of the best-looking of the bunch and must have been a serious contender for the award.
Any worries about stagnation in the medium are quickly put to rest by watching the huge range of independent short films being made. Once again, in spite of funding restrictions the McLaren selection proves that there is a lively and vibrant short film making culture in the UK. I just wish that they could find household recognition beyond their inclusion in festivals.