This Week in Cinema (02.12.07)
The Animation Show 2007
By Beth Capper
Published: February 15th, 2007 | 11:59am
Animator Don Hertzfeldt broke records at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival by winning the Grand Jury Award for Best Short with his animated film Everything Will Be OK. The short follows Bill, whose mundane life seems to take on a more disturbing aspect when the futility of his existence fosters a mental breakdown.
Everything Will Be OK demonstrates what can be accomplished with even the most simplistic pencil scratchings and is the first animated film to win in a non-animation specific category at Sundance in more than a decade. Perhaps this is evidence that judges are finally starting to recognize the artistic merits of this much overlooked cinematic medium.
Hertzfeldt’s short, along with 11 others, is among the picks for this year’s Animation Show, curated by Hertzfeldt and Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge. Now in its third year, The Animation Show exhibits a varied mix of American and International animators who work in live action, stop motion, and 2-D and 3-D computer and traditional animation. The show also includes a submission from Bill Plympton, who acquired legendary status for being the first animator to draw every frame for a feature film entirely by himself. Hertzfeldt and Plympton, as always, are among those who opt for old school techniques, while newcomers seem more focused on technological advances within the medium.
For the most part, the narrative aspect of the shorts on display is fairly tight, opting for comical themes to complement a medium best utilized for satire, with Everything Will Be OK being perhaps the main exception (although there are others). However, plotlines aside, enjoyment of The Animation Show largely rests on whether you like the animation itself. Besides Everything Will Be OK, highlights from the 2007 picks were Run Wrake’s Rabbit — the series opener — which juxtaposes traditional storybook images of rosy-cheeked Victorian children with a sinister storyline and utilizes vibrant primary colors, making for some stunning and memorable scenes; Joanna Quinn’s Dreams and Desires: Family Ties, a 2-D drawn piece etched in murky watercolors that follows an awkward Welsh woman filming a friend’s wedding with disastrous consequences; and Guide Dog, Plympton’s follow up to his Oscar nominated short film Guard Dog.
Many of the other shorts instrumented a mix of live-action and computerised animation and despite some clever ideas in all, the animation itself was not to my personal taste. Overall, though, The Animation Show offers a fascinating and comprehensive look at some of the most important figures working in contemporary animation. And with Bill Plympton present at the touring screenings, any fan of animation would be mad to miss it.
Issue #33
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