Quentin Baillieux

France, 2:53m, 2016

Joyfully mixing incongruous elements from the highbrow world of horse racing with the everyday grit of the urban landscape, this beautifully designed music video explodes preconceptions of race and class as cultures gracefully collide on the streets and freeways of Los Angeles. The infectious track by L.A. artist Charles X, whose music combines strains of hip-hop, soul and jazz, is perfectly realized in the stylized blend of abstraction and representation, languidness and kineticism, in this evocative nocturnal fantasy.

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Tiny Big

Lia Bertels

Belgium, 5:29m, 2017

At once fanciful and disquieting, this film presents a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes expressed through simple black-and-white line drawings, punctuated with occasional surprising bursts of colour. Underscored by a soundtrack featuring the sounds of nature – wind, waves, crickets – the film eschews narrative, challenging viewers to draw their own conclusions about the significance of ritualized actions in a world that’s both hauntingly familiar and decidedly strange.

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Next Door

Pete Docter

U.S., 3:21m, 1991

An over-imaginative young girl drives her middle-aged neighbour crazy with her noisy adventures, until a shared enthusiasm brings them together. Directed by two-time Oscar-winner Pete Doctor when he was a student at Cal Arts, Next Door is a wonderful evocation of the power of imagination and the possibility of finding common ground, rendered in a style which presages the director’s future work with its striking design and highly imaginative visuals.

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The Alan Dimension

Jac Clinch

UK, 8:46m, 2016

Sometimes having special powers beyond those of most mortals doesn’t work out all that well (especially for your long-suffering wife), as this very funny tongue-in-cheek fable amply demonstrates. Blessed – or cursed – with the gift of precognition, the eponymous Alan discovers that being “the next step in cognitive evolution” can wreak havoc with your domestic life – and lead to some hard choices.

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Beautiful Like Elsewhere

Elise Simard

Canada, 4:41m, 2017

As much about light, colour, texture and sound as it is about story, this film evokes a mysterious dreamscape of shimmering tableaux that seem to exist just on the edge of consciousness. Populated by human and nonhuman organisms, classical images and pure form, this allusive world, which may be a vision of the afterlife, hints at a deeper level of awareness and meanings beyond words.

Originally produced in 1964 and restored by the Animation Show of Shows,
“Hangman” is an adaptation of a poem by Maurice Ogden about a town that allows its
citizens to be executed one by one. With its universal themes of persecution, injustice and
personal responsibility, this powerful film speaks to all eras and nations, and may be seen
to have particular relevance in our own time.

Channeling the spirit of Charlie Chaplin – or perhaps Jacques Tati – this very funny tale of a series of unfortunate events in a Japanese mall displays both an impressive attention to detail and great comic timing. Even if you’re not a fan of chiropractic, grown men dressed as fuzzy animals, automated conveyances, garish décor, and/or robotic cleaning devices, “Gokurosama” will show you how, when you put all of these together, it spells highly entertaining animated mayhem.

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Dear Basketball

Glen Keane

U.S., 5:23m, 2017

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Unsatisfying

Parallel Studio

France, 1:17m, 2016

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Min Börda (The Burden)

This cautionary tale reminds us yet again that sometimes there can be too much of a good thing, especially if our powers of discernment leave something to be desired.

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Casino

Steven Woloshen

Canada, 3:58m, 2016

This jazzy, impressionistic depiction of the iconography and energy of a gambling casino (a favourite destination of director Steven Woloshen’s late father, to whom the work is dedicated) is all the more impressive for having been created in Woloshen’s signature style of drawing directly onto the film. With Oscar Peterson’s “Something Coming” as its upbeat soundtrack, the film is a breathlessly kinetic and visually dazzling representative of the possibilities of nontraditional animation techniques.

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Everything

David OReilly

U.S, 10:37m, 2017

Everything – Based on the work of philosopher Alan Watts, who was instrumental in popularizing Eastern religion in the West, this brilliantly conceived and executed short explores the interconnectedness of the universe and the multiplicity of perspectives that underlie reality. Like Watts himself, the film is both playful and profound, and its unique iconography – from somersaulting bears to interstellar flora – allows it to convey weighty ideas with lightness and lucidity.

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