This blog is all about those cold nights we sit in front of the fireplace and give in to all the useless but joyful stuff. As Oscar Wilde stated in the preface of his book The Picture of Dorian Gray: “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”
Join in if you feel like being useless for a while.
The Lady And The Reaper is a Spanish animated short film released in 2009 which was nominated for an Oscar Award for Best Animated Short Film and won the Goya Award for Best Animated Short.
The film is an hilarious tale in which a doctor and the reaper fight over an old lady’s soul and body.
Matter Fisher is a 2010 animation short film by David Prosser. The film was screened
in film festivals around the world and won several prizes. (you can check the
list below)
This one shows us the relationship between a fisherman and a form of
estranged matter somehow similar to a black hole.
(From this point it may contain spoilers. Stop reading
if you wish.)
The aforementioned form of matter attracts everything around it growing
bigger and more powerful going from attracting fish, for the fisherman’s
delight, to a scenario of destruction. One curious fact is that this form of
matter attracts everything but the fisherman which raises one question: is the
matter somehow part of the fisherman? If so, then I believe this is an analogy to
the fisherman’s desire and greed. At first he just wants to catch some fish in
order to survive but shortly after his greed grows out of control leading to
the destruction of everything he knew before.
The plot is rather interesting and so are the animation itself so watch
it if it attracts you.
Awards:
BAFTA Nominated Short Animation, 2011
SICAF, Grand Prize, Graduation Film, 2011
Animanima, Special Distinction - Design, 2011
Holland Animation Film Festival, 3rd Place European Student Film, 2010
Animae Caribe, Best Student Animation, 2010
Anifest Canterbury, Best Creative Design, 2010
London Internation Animation Festival, 2010, Honourable Mention
Royal Television Society Award, Postgraduate Animation, Finalist, 2011
Adobe Design Achievement Award, Finalist, 2010
Nominated Conran Award, 2010
Archived in the British Film Institue, 2011
British Council Supported Animation, 2011
Cinanima is an animation film festival held in Portugal and it is
considered to be one of the most important within the genre. The 36th
edition of the festival awarded Le
grand ailleurs et le petit ici (Here and The Great Elsewhere) by
Michèle Lemieux with the Grand Prix.
This 14 minutes long animation film uses a technique called pinscreen
which was developed by Alexandre Alexeïeff and his wife Claire Parker. (to know
more about this technique please watch the making of the film posted below)
