Kaboom Animation Festival
This Novembre, I went to the first edition of Kaboom Animation Festival in Amsterdam. It was a very enriching experience. I found it eye-opening to see such a wide range of shorts and it made me realise how varied Animation can be. I got to meet some film-makers and get some advice from more experienced animators. Here's me taking notes (and doodling) during Greg McLeod's awesome presentation about the creative process.
I thought I would share with you some of my favourites shorts screened at the festival.
On the right is Lola the Living Potato by Leonid Shmelkov about a little girl who is forced to leave her house, where she has some very fond memories of playing with her grandpa. On the left is Gifted by Yuka Nakamura about a bulldog who becomes a little Santa Claus delivering gifts with his car.
Both are really sweet stories with a nostalgic feel. They're both 2D and hand-drawn in a very soft style, although the result is very different. I felt happy watching these shorts.
This is I'm Going Out for Cigarettes by Osman Cerfon and Strange Invaders by Cordell Baker. Both are very honest and funny stories about the over-precense of a missing father and the invasion of a baby in a couple's life. They're both hilariously bizarre.
In fact, I'm Going Out for Cigarettes was such a brigh family drama that it won the Jury's award for Best Short.
These next two shorts just made me laugh a lot! The first one is about a sneeze so big it triggers a nuclear bomb. The second one is about a man phoning his wife to talk about his day at work (where he was the first man to go to Mars), and she couldn't care less.
They're (OO) by Seo-ro Oh and Phone Home by the Brothers McLeod.
These last three were the most moving. Equip yourself with some tissues before watching them.
The first one, Daughter by Daria Kashcheeva, is a poetic tale about the relationship between a daughter and her father. The elegance of the stop-motion puppets and the way it was shot was breathtaking
The second is the only feature-length film on this list. It is the incredibly powerful story of a mother's fight to save her son during barbaric time. Set during the Khmer Rouge revolution that plunged Cambodia into horror, Funan is based on the memories of director Denis Do's mother, on whom the main character is based. It was very sad but I thought the subject was beautifully tackled. The art style with flowy hand-drawn lines and soft colours gave some lightness to the movie.
The third movie, a short this time, was also beautiful. Memorable by Bruno Collet is a story about a man's slow fall into madness as he loses his memory due to a degenerative disease. It is told through his point of view, and that's what made it so unique and moving. The world changed before our eyes as it changed before his. The use of stop motion in this short was genious, as it was a very malleable medium but felt very real.