Film List - short animation festival

When I posted a link to an online roundup of '50 Best Animated Films' as my monthly 'Film List' back in June, my blog-pal JES kindly sent me some links to a couple of similar but much more interesting lists (check out this original post, and the comments).

That got me to thinking about some of my favourite animated shorts, and I decided to try to corral a few together for you for a special end of the month treat. [Please make time to check out all of them. They just get better and better towards the bottom of the post.]

I kick off with Jérémy Clapin's moody parable of urban alienation, Skhizein, which won last year's Manhattan Shorts film competition (unfortunately, divided into two parts).

And part two is here:

This one, Knickknack, was one of Terry Gilliam's personal '10 best' animated shorts in this article in The Guardian back in 2001. It was one of the very first digitally animated films from John Lasseter, a demo made in 1989 to promote his newly set up Pixar studio (which, of course, went on to produce the Toy Story series and much more). It's the tale of a lonely snowman in a snowdome who becomes smitten with a buxom bikini-clad babe on a neighbouring shelf ornament (later editions of the film trimmed down the extravagant breast size of the original) and determines to break out of his glass prison to be with her. It's an homage to the over-the-top physical comedy of classic Warner Bros. cartoon heroes like Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote.

And this is Pony, a film school project from the very talented Dony Permedi. I was first tipped off to him when the inescapable JES posted his cult favourite Kiwi a few months back. Pony, his previous effort, is a bit rougher around the edges, but even more delightfully dark. Yes, really dark: I think this is the most disturbing black joke I've ever seen in an animation.

And here's The Flower, a wonderful short film with a message. (I haven't been able to find out who directed this yet. Perhaps he or she is lying low for a reason....)

And finally (saving the very best for last?), here's The Sandman, (this version appears to have better picture quality, but embedding is disabled), Paul Berry's 1991 stop-motion classic, which was nominated for an Oscar the following year (how did it not win?). Paul had cut his teeth making a charming animated series based on The Wind In The Willows for British TV in the '80s. After the success of The Sandman, he was recruited by Tim Burton to work as one of the lead animators on The Nightmare Before Christmas, and would appear to have left a deep impression on the style of that production (and of the later Corpse Bride, although he was not actually involved in the making of that). Sadly, he died of a brain tumour in 2001, at the age of just forty. [He made another wonderful short illustrating the Charlie Daniels Band's classic tale, The Devil Went Down To Georgia; but I haven't been able to find that anywhere online.]

Don't have nightmares. Hahahahahahahahaha.....

[Supplement: It's also worth checking out this Chinese cartoon, rather cryptically titled See Through (the original Chinese title is, alas, even more nonsensical). Unfortunately, it's a bit long (16 minutes); and I couldn't find any embed code for it. However, it does have some brilliant sequences in it. And it is an amazing labour of love: it was made single-handedly by a dedicated young tech-nerd, working on an old computer in his bedroom for three-and-a-half years. The full story behind this - and his current success establishing his own digital animation studio - is on the linked page. (A bit hat-tip to Stuart of FoundInChina for sending me this link.)

My 'personal search engine' JES also helped me to find a link to Paul Berry's The Devil Went Down To Georgia.]