Sylvie Fefer
Crocodile Films
8:30 min. 1990
Lack confidence or charisma? Imagine popping a computer disk into your head to acquire the designer personality of your choice. This humorous animation shows a comic "brave new world" where people are caught up in the ultimate self-improvement gimmick - programmed personalities. As floppy-headed people find comfort in their disk identities, a few individuals discover that "personality software" is not all it's promoted to be and opt for the more traditional self-improvement methods—night school and self-help books.
Awards: Red Ribbon (Animation), American Film Festival; Gold Award (Animation), Houston International Festival; Silver Plaque (Animation), Chicago Film Festival; Certificate of Merit, Yorkton Film Festival; Honourable Mention, Columbus International Film Festival.
Subject(s): Humour, Identity, Relationships
Jody Kramer
4:30 minutes •
2006
Available on DVD and VHS
Subject(s): Healing, Humour, Psychology
Gail Noonan
2 min. 1989
A woman finds herself symbolically spinning from scales to roulette tables, marriage to baseball. This humorous animated short shows how one individual deals with life's curve balls.
Subject(s): Humour, Relationships
M.Marilyn Cherenko
4:30 min. 1984
Animator Marilyn Cherenko continues her exploration of the poetic and spiritual qualities of life. The most lyrical of her films, Pursuit/Flight explores a woman's fascination with a bird and the consequences of trying to capture freedom.
Subject(s): Spirituality
Sylvie Fefer
7 min. 1985
(Also available in French as Une
petite histoire)
A Short Story is a humorous animated look at a young girl's reaction when she discovers that her younger sister is suddenly taller than she is. Faced with the fact that she will be short for the rest of her life, she tries to adapt as best she can, joining a group of short people who try to scale the world down to their size. Effective for studies in self-image and exploring likeness and differences.
Award: Red Ribbon (Animation), American Film & Video Festival
Subject(s): Body image, Children's films, Family, Humour
Yasmin Karim
2:30 min. 1995
Sijjil celebrates the dot. The joyous movements and continuous motion of the particles within the dot unfolding and enfolding become part of the natural cycle where everything is circular and revolves in an orbit. Sijjil explores the creation within creation and invites the imagination to enjoy the multiplicity of particles within the unity of oneness.
Award: 1996 Ampia Award (Animation category)
Patrick Jenkins
6 min. 2005
Available on DVD and VHS
In this cel animation, a boy goes skateboarding on a construction site with disastrous results.
Subject(s): Children's films, HumourNorie Miura
3:40 min. 1992
In the beginning, there was an ink smudge that became the human being. Norie Miura's vivid animation takes the viewer on a wry journey from the smudge that began human evolution through a history of violence and destructive technology. She shows us the descendant of the smudge, a corporate executive, wreaking havoc with the world by firing large ink smears.
Ann Marie Fleming
2:10 min. 1992
Ann Marie Fleming's accelerated look at growing up delivers a new twist on storytelling which will leave viewers spinning with amusement. Consequential events such as birth, graduation, leaving home, and beginning a first career are crammed into this delightful animated short.
Award: Northwest Film and Video Festival
Subject(s): Filmmaking, Humour, Slice of life, Storytelling
In this computer animation a bird-napping competitor learns the hard way that his elderly victim does more with his time than just feed his animals.
Martin Rose
3:30 min. 1985
Original water colour and ink paintings lend a wonderful subtlety to Martin Rose's cut-out animation. By isolating small details and familiar sound effects, he evokes the quality of life of an older woman living alone in her apartment.
Awards: Best Animation, Yorkton Film & Video Festival; Best Animation& Best Post-Secondary Film, B.C. Student Film Festival
Subject(s): Slice of life
Kevin McCracken
3 min. 1982
What would the world look like if it were constructed from children's early drawings? We'd see Dads with colourful three-piece suits, and "choice spacecrafts"!
Subject(s): Children's films
Wendy Tilby
7 min. 1986
Taking refuge from the night rain, a gentleman bides his time in an unfamiliar cafe. From behind his newspaper, he takes in with growing interest the sights, sounds, and strangely assorted characters who surround him.
Awards: Best Short Film, Montreal World Film Festival; Best Animation,Yorkton Film & Video Festival; Soroptomist Award, Annecy International Festival of Animation; Shanghai Animation Festival; Ottawa International Animation Festival; Espinho International Festival of Animation
Subject(s): Restaurants, Slice of life
Katherine Li
1 min. 1980
Small rips and tears progress with stunning rhythm to an ultimate split of the world. The imagery has a delicate sketchy quality that resonates against a subtle sound track to create an overwhelming mood between laughter and tears.
Awards: Yorkton International Short Film & Video Festival; Chicago International Film Festival; Northwest Film & Video Festival
Rubén Möller
11 min. 1995
"Theta is a dream every person encounters at least once in a lifetime. A dream envisioning a unique image of God." Man struggles with the forces of Nature and Science, forces of his Maker, which are more often than not beyond his control. Rubén Möller has created an innovative work of 3-D animation using hand crafted characters and a robotic motion control camera system.
Award: Best Film - Stop Motion Animation Category, Vancouver Effects and Animation Festival
Directed and produced by Joel Furtado
6:30 minutes • 2006
Available on DVD and VHS
A quick-tempered witch moves into her new treetop home, only to find its lush setting a little too cheerful for her liking. While she makes a day of scorching the surroundings into something more suitably sterile, her dejected dog explores the nearby wood and encounters the more likable magic of an elderly neighbour. That night a battle ensues as the old man undoes the witch's destruction. Joel Furtado's fantastical film combines 2D and state-of-the-art 3D animation.
Award(s): Best Animated Production, Best 3D Animation,
Best Character Design, Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts
(Student Category); Grand Prize Winner, Reveal '06 – Canadian 3D Animation
Showdown.
Subject(s): Fantasy
Gail Noonan
3:30 min. 1991
This humorous and unorthodox animated rendition of a square dance offers a parody of relations between the sexes.
Subject(s): Satire
Stephanie Ann Stephens
3 min. 1999
The narrator reminisces about her childhood; from the perspective of adulthood, fuzzy childhood memories take on a new perspective. Jumping from image to image, photographs to home movies to claymation, past to present to past, a daughter remembers the abuse her mother suffered from her father.
Subject(s): Family violence, Relationships
Craig Condy-Berggold
7 min. 1988
Based on a bus ride across Canada, both the sound track and visuals are content-laden collages that celebrate the work of alternative community cultural groups—women's bands, poets, artists unions, and community radio - against a backdrop of unemployment. Music by Clive Robertson accompanies the cut-out animated images.
Subject(s): Artists, Labour, Unions
Christine Moulson
6 min. 1995
With exceptional animation and haunting cello music, filmmaker Christine Moulson asks viewers to consider images of ideal beauty. Wandering along the sometimes busy, sometimes quiet Cook street, viewers gradually become aware that the world is being observed through the eyes of an unseen person. Fixating on youth and beauty, this person is reflecting on Western society's obsession with the ideal body image. As the seasons pass and the film progresses the person becomes more and more visible. The woman is enormous; her beauty is age and experience.
Award: Best Animation, Canadian Student Film Festival
Subject(s): Body image
Cliff Mok
5 min. 2001
Alone at night, in separate rooms, two people meet in an online chat room. Worlds apart and unaware of each other's identity, isolation shifts to intimate flights of fantasy. This short animation is a poignant commentary on the escalating social isolation experienced by computer users.
Subject(s): Family, Fantasy, Internet, Isolation
Carol Halstead
12 min. 1993
Also available on DVD
A 60-year-old woman responds to the question, "Why are you in art school at your age?" by telling the story of the struggles and adventures that have brought her to this stage of her life. Using a narrative voice and a variety of visual techniques—photographs, drawings, paintings, cartoons, computer graphics—she touches on experiences and issues that resonate for many women—marriage, mothering, welfare, work, isolation, depression, survival, and strength.
Awards: NFB Award for Animation, The Vancouver International Film Festival; Norman McLaren Award, Canadian Student Film Festival; One of only three Canadian shorts to be chosen for the Sundance Film Festival; Jury Prize, Northwest Film and Video Festival, Oregon; Special Jury Award, Aspen Filmfest, Colorado
Subject(s): Women - artists, Artists, Family, Gender equality, Identity, Mental health
Gail Noonan
6 min. 1995
Also available on DVD
A tube of lipstick shoots up like a missile out of silo. A mascara brush drops with the resounding crash of a falling tree. Drastic and ridiculous efforts to create a perfect body image are presented in this hilarious animated film. A woman's attempts to keep up with fashion's impossible image of "perfection" leads her to pump up her bustline, clear-cut her legs, squeeze out that fat... Fiction is just a little too close to reality as the limits of bodyshaping are stretched.
Award(s):
Subject(s): Body image, Humour
Yasmin P. Karim
4 min. 2002
Zarra explores how every particle in existence, be it animate or inanimate, has a soul which continuously connects to the matrix of the Universal Soul. Through constant change and interplay, soul takes infinite shapes and forms that manifest as a visual symphony of light. The poetry of movement within each particle unfolds the abstract knowledge of the invisible universe and the mysteries within ourselves.
Subject(s): Spirituality
Rubén Möller
19 min. 1990
In a world where muses come to life, a manikin is granted the ability to move. He discovers a drawing, and tries to fashion himself in the image of a man, only to find his mimicry cannot give him a face. An extraordinary work of puppet animation about the search for identity, visually and aurally superb.
Subject: Identity
See also:
Animation A through G
Animation H through O
Moving Images Distribution
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