Tag Archives: animation
July 8, 2014 Events, Filmsanimation, Aritz Moreno, Belgium, Canada, Colin Lepper, Edouard Salier, Finland, France, John Alden Milne, Liam Saint-Pierre, Sheridan College, Spain, Teemu Nikki, Toon Aerts, Tyler Novo, UKJames McNally
It's summertime and there are lots of great things going on in our city, which is why we've assembled another killer lineup of short films to tempt you inside. It doesn't hurt that the Carlton Cinemas are both air-conditioned and fully licensed. Please join us!
Thursday July 17 at 7:00pm
THE WAY OF THE DODO
Dir: Liam Saint-Pierre
The Way of the Dodo follows Umit, a colourful East London shopkeeper, as he fights to keep his passion alive, in the face of an ever-changing digital world.
Official Selection – Sheffield Doc/Fest
Official Selection – Southend-on-Sea Film Festival
Official Selection – Edinburgh Short Film Festival
BEHIND THE CURTAIN (VERHON TAKAA)
Dir: Teemu Nikki
Finland – 2013
School audition in the '80s. Mikko has been training very hard, but singing in front of an audience is not easy. It might be easier from behind the curtain.
Diploma of Merit (Youth Jury) – Tampere International Short Film Festival
Dir: John Alden Milne
Ryan and Cindy have begun to take each other for granted. When tempers flare over a forgotten sandwich, a true showdown emerges where the laundry is left in a heap and the tourtiere is left to rot on the counter.
A humorous look at love, loathing and egg salad sandwiches.
Best in Shorts – Cinefest Sudbury
THE RUNNER – AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER (TIE)
After the death of his father, Jim vows to fulfill the conditions of his will.
MEAN TEDDIES – AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER (TIE)
Dir: Tyler Novo
Faced with the unfortunate inevitability of his future, a teddy bear must make the decision to stay and fight or to step aside and let a creature take his boy. Director Tyler Novo is a recent graduate of Sheridan College's famed animation programme.
NEVER STOP CYCLING
Dir: Colin Lepper
In order for Ed to continue his comfortable, routine life, he must make the journey into a strange living world. Director Colin Lepper is a recent graduate of Sheridan College's famed animation programme.
CÓLERA
Dir: Aritz Moreno
The residents of an isolated village take justice into their own hands.
Official Selection – Austin Film Festival
Official Selection – BFI London Film Festival
Dir: Edouard Salier
Havana is occupied by foreign forces and on the edge of civil war. Lazaro, a kid from the slums, walks us through his streets and reveals the chaos that has taken over the capital.
PERFECT DRUG
Dir: Toon Aerts
Belgium – 2012
Misha, Yumiko and Chinatsu are sitting in a parked car in front of a strange motel. In the backseat they have a huge number of test tubes filled with different substances. It's clear that their attempted burglary didn't go as planned… While Yumiko tries to calm down their Albanian boss Hassan on the phone, Misha can't resist it any longer. He opens up a test tube and drinks it to the last drop, causing some extraordinary effects.
Join us as we continue our third season! The Facebook RSVP is free, advance tickets are $10, door tickets are $12, and subscriptions are just $35 for the rest of the year (and they include admission to our July 27th "Secret Screening," too.
TAAFI Co-presentation: Straight Up Toons
May 30, 2014 Eventsanimation, TAAFIJames McNally
We are huge fans of animation here at Shorts That Are Not Pants, and so it's with great pleasure we can share that we will be co-presenting a program of short films at this year's Toronto Animation Arts Festival International. It's on Saturday June 14th at 1:45pm at George Brown College (Waterfront Campus) 2nd Floor Cinema, and it's called Straight Up Toons. Here are some details about the films in the lineup:
AIN'T NO FISH
Directors: Tom Gasek, Miki Cash | UK/USA 2013 | 3:30
Ain't No Fish is a short stop motion animated film that is set to the music and lyrics of Sigman and Russell and performed by Hoagy Carmichael. It's an 'easy-go-lucky' song about fishing and why 'Some Days There Just Ain't No Fish'. Animated seals in the Arctic sing the show tune and it's slowly revealed in the background why there 'Ain't No Fish.' Despite the upbeat attitude of the seals the garbage and oil industry that pervades the sea provides the answer. The film is capped with an appropriate quote from the great explorer and oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
Director: David Barlow-Krelina | Canada 2013 | 2:44
A man takes the subway. Inside his brain, a countdown clock hits zero and a little person prepares for lift-off. The man sneezes.
CRIME: THE ANIMATED SERIES
Directors: Alix Lambert, Sam Chou | USA 2013 | 20:03
From bank robbers to cops to victims to observers, Crime: The Animated Series explores how crime affects us all. The series is dark, compelling, heartbreaking, and yes, sometimes funny. Always surprising and intimate, it presents a collection of unique perspectives on a subject that has captivated us throughout time.
DRUNKER THAN A SKUNK
Director: Bill Plympton | USA 2013 | 3:30
An adaptation of a poem by Walt Curtis about a cowboy town that torments the local drunk.
FEED YOUR CREATIVE BRAIN
Director: leftchannel | USA 2013 | 0:51
motion is a national event celebrating creativity in motion — the TED Talks of our industry if you will — and they selected us to create the opening titles for the 2013 show. They gave us the best brief possible: Do whatever you want, just make it cool – we had full creative reign. Obviously, we instantly thought of tentacles… and the concept grew from there.
HIGH NOON KABOOM
Director: Brett Jubinville | Canada 2013 | 0:45
The Old West, a ghost town, and two gunmen stand off in an epic showdown. Who has the upper hand? Who will win?
HIGH WOOL
Directors: Moritz Mugler, Nikolai Maderthoner | Germany 2013 | 2:22
A fratricidal war in a town made of strings.
Director: Hisko Hulsing | Belgium/Netherlands 2012 | 17:49
A man is being robbed and stabbed by a junkie. In that last second before he dies, a youth friendship flashes before his eyes. He and and his bosom-friend grew apart, when the latter was being drawn more and more into a misty world of drugs and criminality under influence of a lowlife dealer who lives with his father on the junkyard in their neighbourhood.
LUMBERJACKED
Director: Joel Mackenzie | Canada 2014 | 2:44
A reformed lumberjack must harness the power of NATURE in order to defeat an 8-bit mutant wasp monster that is destroying his friends and his home.
ME, MARIONETTE
Director: Graham Carter | UK 2012 | 3:30
Director and designer Graham Carter's beautifully imaginative illustrations and worlds come to life in a trio of nostalgic stories culminating in a final piece showcasing the journeys of spacemen, samurais and explorers following an invite to a secret finale. Me, Marionette takes inspiration from the story of Pinocchio and the recent birth of Graham's first child,exploring what he imagines his son's future to be, the world and influences that surround him and the person he will become.
MONKEY RAG
Director: Joanna Davidovich | USA/UK 2013 | 3:45
Monkey Rag is a traditionally animated throwback to the musical cartoons of yore. Inspired by the thumping, riotously fun music of the Asylum Street Spankers, Mitzi pursues a disaster of her own making in this richly coloured world where reason is overrated. Mitzi may be barking up the wrong tree, but she also knows that when it comes to love, sometimes you just gotta give a little bit of what you got.
MR. HUBLOT
Director: Laurent Witz, Alexandre Espigares | France/Luxembourg 2013 | 11:43
Mr. Hublot lives in a world where characters made partially of mechanical parts, driving huge vehicles, rub shoulders with each other. A world where the giant scale of machines and the relentless use of salvaged materials reign supreme. A withdrawn, idiosyncratic character with OCD, Mr. Hublot is scared of change and the outside world. His solution: he doesn't step foot outside his apartment! The arrival of the dog Robot Pet will turn his life upside down: he has to share his home with this very invasive companion…
Director: Jacques Khouri | Canada/USA 2013 | 2:30
Produced with a graphic flair and text, this piece is the classic tale of the Tortoise and the Hare with a key difference; the Hare has four legs while the tortoise has none.
Director: Anthony Farquhar-Smith | UK 2013 | 1:24
Sometimes life is not about the destination. It is about the journey.
YELLOW STICKY NOTES | CANADIAN ANIJAM
Director: Jeff Chiba Stearns | Canada 2013 | 7:40
15 of Canada's most highly acclaimed independent animators have come together to create one animated film. Yellow Sticky Notes | Canadian Anijam is an innovative and collaborative approach to animation filmmaking and unites animators from Vancouver to Halifax, and all places in between, to self-reflect on one day of their lives using only 4×6 inch yellow sticky notes, a black pen and animation meditation. Featuring animation from the original Anijam creator Marv Newland along with Oscar® winners Alison Snowden and David Fine and Academy Award® nominees Cordell Barker, Janet Perlman, Chris Hinton, and Paul Driessen. Other award-winning animators, Jeff Chiba Stearns, Jody Kramer, Howie Shia, Jonathan Ng, Lillian Chan, Malcolm Sutherland, Joel Mackenzie, and Louise Johnson round out the 'anijammers.'
Tickets are $15 and are available online or at the door. Use the promo code PARTNER2014 to save 10% on tickets and passes bought online!
P.S. Two films we featured in April are also part of TAAFI's lineup this year. Blackout will be part of the Student Shorts screening and The Missing Scarf is included in the Shorts 3: Hilariously Strange & Incredibly Dark lineup.
Closeup: The Missing Scarf
March 17, 2014 Filmsanimation, Eoin Duffy, George Takei, IrelandJames McNally
The Missing Scarf is part of our April 17th lineup. Get your advance tickets now and we'll see you there!
It seems only right that on this St. Patrick's Day we should feature Irish filmmaker Eoin Duffy's work. I became familiar with him about a year ago when I saw his beautifully haunting short On Departure. Created in the aftermath of a family tragedy, that film was all at once an expression of grief, an attempt to come to terms with loss, and a tribute to a departed loved one. Not bad for five minutes of very minimalistic animation.
In his latest film, The Missing Scarf (created directly after On Departure), Duffy continues to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy. In this case, the plotline seems trivial, even silly, but the themes are heavy indeed. Albert the squirrel has misplaced his favourite scarf, and he approaches his other friends in the forest for help in finding it. But each of them has worries of their own, and he never seems to get any closer to finding his scarf. Confronting some of life's greatest fears, which always seem to grow when life seems uncertain, Duffy makes a powerful statement while again using nothing but simple lines and cartoon-like characters.
The decision to cast George Takei as the narrator is a brilliant one. Takei's sense of whimsy fits the film's content perfectly, and I can picture him in the recording booth reading his lines with one eyebrow cheekily raised. The "child's storybook" style of narration could lull the viewer into thinking this is a much simpler film than it is, but Takei's presence should tip off the more perceptive audience members.
Filmmaker Eoin Duffy
The film took about 7 months to complete using the open source 3D modelling software Blender 3D. It was funded by the Irish Film Board in conjunction with RTE (Ireland's national television broadcaster) and the Arts Council of Ireland.
Duffy now lives and works in Vancouver, which makes it even more satisfying for us to be showing his work here in Toronto. Get your ticket and join us on April 17th for The Missing Scarf and more.