Animated Shorts

I went to Indiefest's Animation Amalgamation program last night. The program consisted of nine short films - all animated except for one that was stop-action.

Two of my favorites from the program are available on-line so I thought I would share the links.

Rabbit by Run Wrake is the story of two children that find an idol inside a rabbit they kill. The idol can turn insects into jewels, feathers, and ink.
Personally, I think I would have described the entity as an imp or sprite rather than an idol. What sets this story apart for me is that the animation is composed of old-school style illustrations from readers - those are books with See Dick Run style drawings that help young children learn to read by associating the word with the object. The entire 8 minute, 34 second film can be viewed at Atom Films.

The other film is Ara's Flight by Hagop Kaneboughazian. According to him, the child in the film is orphaned as a result of the Armenian Genocide but upon my initial (and repeat) viewing, that was not clear at all. The visuals are well enough but the Icarus motif and score are what caught my attention. You can view the ~4 minute film on Axis Origin.

Other shorts I enjoyed were Kuro Kumo by Jesse Norton about a woman who was a samurai in a previous life and Last Dream by Jason Nielsen.

One of best parts of going to film festivals is that you get to see films that you would not otherwise see. This is especially true for short films which have no distribution potential.