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Love, loss, madness, joy — a few of the things in life that can be a bit much to look at directly. So much easier to discuss through a filter. This year’s animated shorts bring you survival, death, addiction, ghosts, reincarnation, new love, sex, and revolution. Maintain Yourself ponders the work required to be “normal.” For A Better Life examines what it means to heal after years of abuse. Phototaxis questions where myth and addiction overlap. MORPHOSIS gleefully posits that maybe drugs are the answer after all. Mediums include stop motion, pastel-on-paper palimpsest, 2D and 3D computer animation, and cut paper.
Content notes: animated nudity, sex, discussion of child abuse, death of a child.
– Rebekah Murphy & Jozef Kluczkiewicz
Featuring:
Maintain Yourself
Elena LaCourt, USA, 4 min.
A woman performs her daily grooming routine.
The Spirit Seam
Ashley Gerst, USA, 15 min.
Life and death in a 1950s Appalachian coal-mining town.
Phototaxis
melissa ferrari, USA, 7 min.
Myth or addiction? In West Virginia narcotics addiction and the Mothman blend together.
For A Better Life
Yasmin Mistry, USA, 10 min.
Sold for $100 at the age of 5, Fekri suffers through years of abuse before finding healing in a New York group home.
Night Train
Deirdre Beck, USA, 2 min.
A couple embark on an adventure that never happened.
Mother’s Peak
Simon Allen, USA, 15 min.
Secrets and ghosts haunt a woman in a small Pennsylvania town.
Harls
Kenzie Sutton, USA, 2 min.
A guy named Harls keeps getting reincarnated.
Lilly Goes Fishing
The Bum Family, Canada, 8 min.
Lilly, a giant orange monster, embarks on an adventure at a lakeside fishing camp.
MORPHOSIS
Santiago Castaño, Colombia, 11 min.
Enslaved frogs overthrow their masters with the help of magic fruit.
Wunderkammer
Jennifer Linton, Canada/USA, 6 min.
Madelaine’s cabinet of curiosities contained a collection of wonders to both delight and horrify.
The Switch
John Paul Grigsby, USA, 5 min.
The inner thoughts of a god figure in light of the waywardness of humanity.