Sketches, Scratches, & Cartoons: Animation
Friday, July 23, 2004
8:30 - Live jazz by the Paul Flaherty-Chris Corsano Duo
9:00 - Animated shorts
On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
232 Third Street, in the Gowanus Section of Park Slope, Brooklyn.
In the event of rain the show will be indoors at the same location.
Sketches, Scratches, & Cartoons: Animation
More great animated films are being made today than ever before. The reasons are two-fold and inherent to the medium: the art of animation depends completely on the director's ability to convey perfectly all of the most minute details of an alternate universe perfectly, and, since every detail in the film is necessarily synthetic, the filmmaker's artificial manipulation of those details only adds to and never distracts from the audience's pleasure in the experience. Whereas it is rarely possible to digitally tweak a live-action performance by an actor to create a more credible or moving scene, an animated performance is necessarily artificially tweaked; in animated videos, the tools become vitally important and creative partners, almost as if the filmmaker has been granted a more skilled and easily directed cast of actors, sound technicians, and set and lighting designers.
It should not be surprising that filmmakers so involved with perfectly generating alternative universes would fixate on characters attempting to find their way in universes that are far from perfect. In tonight's program, various characters attempt to navigate through bizarre and often unpleasant dimensions governed by rules mysterious to the audience and the inhabitants of those lands alike: numbers battle fruitlessly against timepieces; undersized submarines fight to save their little captain from the anarchy of an outsized European square; wild black and white cuckoos bounce around a violent, anarchic, yet authoritarian alternate London; a cigarette-smoking hand-shaped monster faces an executioner in a world without recognizable words; two little Pokemon-like beasts become trapped in a time warp created by a Vertigo fan. Other struggles are more internal, as in the Academy Award°winning story of Harvie Krumpet, a sad little man who wanders through a lonely life trying to make sense of the Àfakts² he records; or in the two-dimensional memoirs of Lev, a man driven to illustrate the more embarrassing moments of his adolescence, either in an attempt to determine their significance or to undermine it. Often the protagonists in these films are struggling not only against the challenges of adverse circumstances, but also to determine who they are and what they are meant to be doing in a world so maniacal. However chaotic these worlds, the power of each film lies in the precision with which the filmmakers are able to sketch, either digitally or otherwise, their finest details. Though existential concerns will never subside, it should be a bit reassuring that there are some artists that are now at least a bit less constrained by the laws that govern our own little universe.
We would like to give special thanks to Square Footage Films for contributing to tonight's show. If you enjoyed this program you should pick up Avoid Eye Contact, a fantastic DVD compilation of the best of New York's independent animation.
THE FILMS:
Sub (Jesse Schmal, 8:30) *
Perhaps a metaphor for the decline of the Soviet Empire, perhaps a treatise on the vulgarization of mass culture and the decline of religiosity, or perhaps simply a surreal short about the crew of a miniature submarine attempting to save their captain from being splattered about the ground of a European plaza in which thugs battle nuns in a game of soccer, dogs disapprove of gourmet delicacies, and Vespa-riding Eurotrash make clumsy passes at a violent femme fatale.
Bathtime in Clerkenwell (Alesky Budovsky, 4:00) *
An irresistible music video for an infectious song by (The Real) Tuesday Weld. Black and white birds shoot out of cuckoo clocks and spread into the town of Clerkenwell, angering sleeping residents and cuckoo kings and cops to the bouncy rhythm of a chopped up old groove.
Cog (Irina Goundourtsev, 5:50)
A somber sentient robot made up of only cogs and levers toils in a world made of larger cogs and levers, moping about drearily until he finally encounters something genuinely organic. He is overjoyed to have finally found something so soft and new, but his rigid world will never appreciate genuine floral vulnerability.
Army of Me (Norma V. Toraya, 5:00)
Combining photos, drawn images, and live video footage from the deserts outside L.A., Army of Me expresses the aggressive frustration of falling in love via images of twirling female bounty hunters doing battle in a swirling desert storm.
Handgun (Sam Crees & Alex Minnick, 0:50)
In a dreary apartment within a world of pure inchoate and incomprehensible drama, a homunculous stares down destiny, and destiny wins.
Nesting Grounds (John Bergin, 4:45)
A humming bird and an ancient statue, face to face, look deep into each other's eyes and gaze into the future and the past, considering birth and decay and the passage of time.
Someone Has To Die (Norma V. Toraya, 3:30)
Rabbits, frogs, birds, band members, and laser-toting kangaroos fly across the screen and over hills and valleys in a music video for the melancholy pop band Maritime, a new group made up of members of the now defunct bands The Promise Ring and The Dismemberment Plan.
Clay Soup (Spencer Weaver, 4:00) **
Two green biped blobs stretch, bludgeon, and mold a more globular compatriot, finally shaping him into a version of themselves. For more great youth-produced films, come to our Youth Power Night on August 20th at The River Project.
The Conversation (Mallory Whitelaw, 2:30)
Two little animated fuzzballs get trapped in a cinematic vortex in which space and identity are mutable, time is repeating and the only sound present is a conversation between Jimmy Stewart and Tom Helmore that folds back on itself and repeats, forever and ever.
Harvie Krumpet (Adam Elliot, 23:00)
This year's Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short tells of the sad, strange life of Harvie. He is born impoverished in Middle Europe, quickly suffers a childhood tragedy, emigrates to Australia, suffers through a succession of menial jobs, has a string of bad luck that leaves him with a magnetized steel plate in his head and eventually ends up in a retirement home. The one constant in his life is his book of "fakts" which he wears around his neck and opens occasionally to jot down observations.
Fan: A Love Story (Lori SamSel, 5:00)
A turnip-headed humanoid pines for the cool refreshment of a manufactured breeze but still manages to love the sun that scorches her. A story about ambivalence toward the weather that any New Yorker without AC can surely relate to.
Drink (Patrick Smith, 4:00) *
We've all at one time or another had a drink that made us feel like someone else.
Protégé (Lev, 1:00)
Rooftop favorite Lev briefly deconstructs his adolescent tendency to impersonate the barely hip and hardly even cool.
Insatiable (Irina Goundortsev, 1:45)
A short, slimy statement about man's inherent discomfort with those parts of himself (and herself) which are closest to nature.
Mr. Smile (Fran Krause, 8:15) *
Simply and strangely drawn, the world created by Fran Krause draws from the tropes of B-movie horror films, classic children's animation and especially Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter, but even if you get the references you'll never guess what will happen next in Mr. Smile, as creepy smiley-faces, brain-damaged monkeys, shrunken roosters, denture stealing squirrels and robotic old men gather together for an unlikely party.
Cincompasion (Eduardo Villacis, 7:00) ***
A group of characters fight against the inevitable passage of time and are dragged forward into a new epoch against their will.
The Heap (Jacob and Daniel Cartwright, 3:00) ****
Two birds—or a bird and a cat—and a stray pixel are drawn inexplicably to a pile of slime. Or is it a pile of pixels? And maybe that cat is actually a walking piece of slime. In the end we are all just pixels..
THE MUSIC: Paul Flaherty-Chris Corsano Duo. Saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Chris Corsano are New England-based musicians dedicated to the promise and purpose of free improvisation. Paul has released numerous recordings since the late 70's, while Chris is a relative newcomer. For the past 5 years, the two have operated together in duo format as well as in collaborations with some of the finest freedom thinkers around such as Nmperign's Greg Kelly, Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke of Sonic Youth, Matt Heyner of Test and the No Neck Blues Band, Daniel Carter, Christina Carter and Heather Murray of Charalambides/Scorces, Wally Shoup, and Steve Swell. Together, Flaherty & Corsano seek to champion the cause of total free improvisation, an often misunderstood, underestimated, and sometimes even hated art form.
