Alter Ego
Kuba Gryglicki. Poland, 2007.
In a ramshackle house somewhere in the wilds, a mysterious man tries to discover his real nature: is he a buffoon with delusions of grandeur, or a fallen king? Pure European fantastique in an ingenious and disturbing variation of the topic of the doppleganger. Who does look at us when we look at a mirror?
Kuba Gryglicki has a degree in painting and animation in the Academy of Fine arts of Poznan. Interested in the traditional technologies of painting and animation, he has also explored the possibilities of the digital technologies. Alter Ego is his first short film as director. With a splendid baroque score of Zbigniew Kozub.
Animal Farm
Min Ji Jeong. South Korea, 2007.
Urban alienation, grotesque figures and extreme hobbies, in a history where the pig slaughter becomes a forceful metaphor for human being’s less affable face. With Animal Farm, Min Ji Jeong turns into one of the more notable realities of the complex and stimulant panorama of the Korean animation.
Arka
Grzegorz Jonkajtys. Poland, 2007.
A virus of unknown origin has killed with almost the whole human population. Few survivors escape by sea in search of a promised land, led by a man in his ark. From the producers of the multiawarded Fallen Art (2004), Arka is the second short film of the graduated in Fine arts in Warsaw Grezegorz Jonkajtys, who has a wide experience in the field of digital effects for big Hollywood productions.
Battle of the Album Covers
Rohitash Rao & Abraham Spear. USA, 2007.
The coverts of classic pop and rock albums come to life and enter a cruel battle between each other. A funny short that will delight fans of the popular music with its avalanche of references and jokes at the expense of some classic exponents of an art, the illustration of LP cover, which some consider lost. Rohitash and Spear are a couple of New York based filmmakers, and after the viral success of Battle of the Album Covers they promise to continue entertaining and making think the pop-rock fans.
Code Hunters
Ben Hibon. United Kingdom, 2006.
An ultraviolence and savage action epic starring the coolest superhero in the Universe. Shen, Lawan, Zom and Nhi join forces to take criminal gangs, corrupt cops and some other ferocious monster. Born in Geneva, Ben Hibon has developed his artistic career in London since 1996, when he completed his design studies. His works have been seen in festivals as Onedotzero or Resfest, and they cover advertising, designing animated characters and scenes in video games (Killer 7) and film (Tokyo Zombie, directed by Sakichi Sato).
Dji vou veu volti
Benoît Feroumont. Belgium, 2007.
A devoted, tireless minstrel finds an unexpected enemy when he tries to court a princess. The thing is that sometimes, our supposed allies can play dirty on us, as proved by this delightful operetta, much deeper and more rigorous it appears, which is the second Feroumont’s film. Dji vou veu volti is a Wallon expression which servers to declare love for another person in a old-fashioned polite way.
Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor (Kafka Inaka Isha)
Koji Yamamura. Japan, 2007.
“That’s how people are in my region. Always demanding the impossible from the doctor. They have lost the old faith. The priest sits at home and tears his religious robes to pieces, one after the other. But the doctor is supposed to achieve everything with his delicate surgeon’s hand. Well, it’s what they like to think. I have not offered myself. If they use me for sacred purposes, I let that happen to me as well. What more do I want, an old country doctor, robbed of my servant girl!”
This short film is a remarkable work of interpreting the story A country doctor, written at the most prolific Kafka’s epoque, by Koji Yamamura, one of the key names of the independent Japanese animation. Born in 1964 and graduated from the University Tokyo Zokei, he won an Oscar nomination for his short film Atama-yama.
Game Over
PES. USA, 2007.
PES himself explained the concept of his short film Game Over in The Animation Show: “The concept of Game Over was to take something electronic and remake it by hand, and essentially do it in this style that I’ve been developing where familiar objects that look like other things are swapped in. This is a style that obviously I’ve been working on for a few years now, and I used it in KaBoom!, but this is basically a re-creation of something that’s computerized or electronic, done by hand”. From this idea, PES remakes the whole iconic tradition of the first video games using the most varied and unlikely objects.
Wolfie the Pianist
Yasuyuki Shimizu, Japan, 2007.
One day, a lone wolf with excellent skills in music receives a strange letter: “Dear wolf. Please let us hear you play the piano” The wolf begins a strange journey through deserts, forests and mountains, carrying his piano and playing his wonderful music with the sole purpose of finding the sender of the letter. Wolfie The Pianist is the directional debut of Yasuyuki Shimizu, animator in productions such as Naruto, Steamboy and Spriggan.
