The Ottawa International Animation Festival's Shorts Competition 2 features experimental and fantastical animation from around the world. While this evening's offerings were less accessible than Competition 1, there were still many worthy shorts on hand, some of which may end up vying for next year's Oscar for Best Animated Short.
OIAF's Shorts Competition 2: The Good . . .
It takes a lot for me to like an experimental/abstract animation but I'll happily give a thumbs-up to Steven Subotnick's Two (USA), a piece with great pacing, nice use of texture and the wit to get in, make its point and get out while the going's good.
Andrea Dorfman's PSA for The Equality Effect (Canada) uses deceptively simple ink on paper to illustrate a point about how best to promote equality for women and girls living in Africa. Simple and effective.
Speaking of effective, Fx Goby & Matt Landour's The Siege (UK), a spot for Coca-Cola, pulls out all the stops to show how a village of ice-dwelling creatures manages to foil an attacking army led by a fire-breathing dragon. One of those rare instances where imagination matches the production values.
Jakob Weyde & Jost Althoff's Hinterland (Germany) tells the witty and touching tale of a crow who steals a bear's new iPod and the changes it causes.
Joanna Priestley's Eye Liner (USA) is another effective abstract/experimental animation that uses various shapes to "explore the archetypes of the human face". Some cool ideas there, and it didn't wear out its welcome.
. . . The Bad . . .
Once again, there were no truly horrendous assaults on my eyeballs, but the weaker shorts had some faults in common. The biggest one is animators failing to apply Ye Olde Quarter-Inch Trim to their pieces.
Richard Negre's Une Seconde par Jour [One Second per Day] (France) featured a great concept: the artist drew 25 frames of animation - which equals one second of footage - every day for a year. It's a shame the resulting abstract short wasn't as compelling as its premise, and it hit saturation point less than 3 minutes into its 7:10 running time.
Magali Charrier's 12 Sketches on the Impossibility of Being Still (UK) had a similar weakness but boredom only started to set in at the six-minute mark of its 8-minute running time.
Funnily enough, Jamie Metzger's Paso Doble (Canada) suffered from the opposite problem: her bullfight as a metaphor for domestic abuse could have used more development to make its characters more nuanced.
. . . And the Awesome
Fx Goby & Max Landour's The Siege was a spectacular display of production values and storytelling, while Jakob Weyde & Jost Althoff's Hinterland was a great dialogue between two very different characters. Both were very worthy contenders.
However, the short that touched both my heart and funnybone was Pjotr Sapegin's The Last Norwegian Troll (Norway), featuring narration from Max von Sydow. I previously saw it at this year's Worldwide Short Film Festival, and it improves with repeated viewings. At times hilarious and poignant, it's a treasure and the finest of this collection.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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