Nominees for Best International Animated Short Unveiled for 2021 UWPG Film Festival
Brazilian animation goes up against European talent in surreal category
Jason Pchajek, staff writer
With another year of international film talent comes another year of glorious animation from around the world. This year, the nominees for Best International Animated Short run the gamut.
There are fun jaunts in surreal locales, gut-wrenching accounts of animals in a slaughterhouse, tension-filled midnight escapes, and even a little bit of love laid bare on your screen. The 2021 UWPG Film Festival was certainly spoiled by animated brilliance.
The Dip – United Kingdom
Sharp and surreal, evoking the same bizarre forms animated in the top cartoons of the 90s, Simona Mehandzhieva has produced a stellar piece.
Following a drag performer trying to find the beat, the dance, the rhythm in a boring world – even asking God what they think of all this – the flowing animation gives the piece a rocking motion that draws the audience along. ()’s smooth and animation is juxtaposed against the rigid, jittery animation of the people around her, as reality bends in increasingly strange ways that’ll keep you guessing moment to moment.
Quite possibly the strangest nominee for Best International Animated Short to date.
Please Don’t Touch – France
This film is worth it for the opening seconds alone, as we see drab, grey shapes come to life, as lights kick on to reveal the strange shapes to be modern art pieces hung in a stark white museum. Darkness chased away to reveal the colour beneath.
Clocking in at almost 10 minutes, Please Don’t Touch is the longest nominee in the category.
When an unfortunate incident leaves the cardinal rule of art galleries ripe to be broken, we see the experiences of modern art museums broken down and dissected in a stilted and abstract way.
With great use of colour, and the imposition of shapes in the frame to capture depth and location while maintaining a minimalist presentation, each frame of Capucine Gougelet’s film is worth a display of its own.
The Night of Men – Spain
It’s short – just under three minutes – but justifiably feels so much longer.
But that’s the point, is it not? Following a lone walker, small and timid, as they walk home late at night, the world to them become horrid. Around every corner, a sound denotes danger, light your only salvation, and each person you see a potential threat, which perfectly captures the feeling of being a woman, alone at night.
Male figures are brutish, overbearing, large, and intimidating, with snide looks, and overbearing presences. Then, they turn monstrous, morphing together into a mass of threatening, terrifying humanity.
This truly captures its subject matter perfectly.
Behind the Jugular – Norway
When we hear about slaughterhouses, its always in terms of either the meat industry, or the suffering of animals.
Nobody ever thinks about the workers.
In Zoe Armit’s Behind the Jugular this perspective is not lost. As a former worker recounts their experience, graphic descriptions are overlaid on shifting depiction of the everyday shopping experience. Flashes of memory strike the viewer with overpowering strength.
Studying a piece of produce turns to wielding a knife, walking back to the car, your dog is replaced by a terrified and screaming calf, all set to a story of horrific and disgusting treatment.
The film is hard to watch, but worth every moment.
1325 Kilometres 227 days – Brazil
Now, after all that, let’s have some fun.
Channeling their experience into a piece of fun and beautiful art, Gustavo de Almeida and Vitor Teixeira delight with 1325 Kilometres 227 days. When COVID turned a long-distance relationship even longer, de Almeida and Teixeira found the perfect way to cut down the distance: Whatsapp voice messages.
Those little periodic reminders of what their partner’s voice sounded like were just the beginning of how they maintained their love over distance and time. Including said messages directly into the film certainly helped make the experience far more intimate.