myDylarama

Interview with Joanna Quinn and Les Mills, director and writer of Affairs of the Art

Abla Kandalaft — 2021-02-06T17:04:58Z

Beryl has featured in a number of your films. Can you tell us a bit more about her? Who was the inspiration for her character? How has Beryl's character evolved since we first met her?

Beryl started life as a very one-dimensional character in a comic strip that Joanna developed in art college. In Joanna's first Beryl film, her graduation short, Girls Night Out, she emerged as one of a group of working-class women in a local factory who organized a visit to a male stripper to celebrate Beryl's birthday. This was the first time her friends (and the audience) became aware that there was more to Beryl than meets the eye. Joanna personally researched the idea for the film by actually watching a male stripper perform! This was the first step in the evolution of Beryl's character, where Joanna became determined to confound the stereotype of a normal working-class factory employee and think outside the box.

Beryl is really a composite of various women in Joanna's life, including Joanna's single mother. Much of Beryl's character stems from being brought up only by her, seeing her strength, resilience, and ability to laugh in the face of adversity. Another influence was a very gregarious woman who served refreshments in the cafeteria of Joanna's art college. This woman was a frequent source of observational research. In a sea of young and trendy art students trying to be cool, this woman was a constant reality check—a down-to-earth, “normal” and reassuring maternal presence whom students could confide in.

In Body Beautiful, Beryl and her friends work in a Japanese factory in Wales. She's overweight and ridiculed remorselessly by the factory bully, a macho supervisor, Vince. Vince's harassment is ruthless, but Beryl soon secretly takes Vince on at his own game and, to the delight of the other women, ultimately triumphs and totally humiliates him. This film established Beryl as a truly determined and creative anti-heroine—a minor superwoman.

We both actually worked in factories – Les in a bread and cake factory and Joanna in factories that made laxatives and souvenirs, including mini-Eiffel Towers. Body Beautiful was set in a factory that produced televisions, and both of us spent a lot of time in factories doing on-the-spot observational research, i.e., drawing, recording and filming. We were extremely impressed by the camaraderie and bonhomie of the predominantly young and female workforce there, and noticed that all the senior, managerial roles were occupied by men.

In Dreams and Desires: Family Ties, Beryl acquires a video camera and becomes obsessed with filmmaking, using it to articulate her desires, dreams and thoughts in video-diary entries. As a “cineaste par excellence,” she agrees to film her friend's wedding, seizing the opportunity to “strut her stuff” filmically, with disastrous and hilarious results. Beryl develops a driving obsession to master filmmaking, avidly studying the techniques of avant-garde documentary and seminal filmmakers like Vertov and Eisenstein, trying to reach far beyond the usual limits of the wedding-video genre – a fearless and creative exploration that ends in a disastrous denouement.

How do you cast the voices in your films?

Les writes detailed, descriptive character profiles containing their visual characteristics, idiosyncrasies and distinctive behaviour patterns. Joanna draws detailed versions of the character, often showing a range of facial expressions, moods, physical habits, and eccentricities. Joanna delights in lip sync, so she spends lots of time in front of a mirror using herself as the model. Once we're both completely satisfied with a character visually, we will audition professionals. For Body Beautiful, somebody had recommended a Welsh actress named Menna Trussler and we knew immediately that she was the ideal voice choice for Beryl, so we've used her on the last three Beryl films. We do rehearsals and record them for reference. We've never used anybody in the Beryl films who was really famous, as we have in some of the other films and TV commercials we've made.

Can you tell us a bit more about your collaboration with Les Mills?

We've collaborated closely since 1987, when Les helped me with the concept and completion of Girls Night Out. We started our company, Beryl Productions International, in Wales in 1989. Sometimes we both come up with the initial ideas for films, but usually it's Les. He then writes the screenplays and character profiles, which are the written equivalent of my drawn visualizations of characters and settings that eventually feed the storyboards. I admit to being very conservative and find it quite hard to experiment. Working with Les is really good, because he's the opposite: incredibly open-minded and adventurous. His ideas are much broader and much stranger than mine. After he's written the first draft of the script, I respond visually. Sometimes I say, “God, I can't draw that,” and he says, “Maybe you're thinking of it in the wrong way, maybe we could do it this way.” Sometimes it's quite painful when we work together, because he gets really excited and I get really negative, saying, “Well, that's not possible!” But as I'm saying it, I'm sort of accepting that it will happen. Les is always very critical about my animation, which keeps me on my toes. He always insists that I maintain dynamic, liquid movement and vigour in my drawing line, because he says that this is one of the major qualities that most people admire about my drawing and animation technique. He tries to make sure that I maintain this fluidity and energy as much as possible throughout the films. This was quite difficult to do in some sections of Affairs of the Art, as there are lots of interior scenes with very limited action or interaction. We sometimes have disputes about viewpoint, backgrounds and space—Les tends to be more aware of the space in a scene, but of course my main obsession is with character. Ultimately, we end up agreeing!

The number of short films from the UK across the festival sector seems to be dwindling. What has been your experience as a short filmmaker? Do you feel there's been a change in the level of support or acknowledgement shorts get in the country?

The funding regime in the UK has declined greatly since we started making films. In the '80s and '90s, funding was available from many sources, especially from enlightened television stations like Channel 4 UK and Channel S4C in Wales; even the BBC were falling over themselves to fund young, new, innovative talent. We were very lucky: we were in the right place at the right time, and we managed to get funding up until the early '90s with help from S4C. The other area where funding was available, of course, was TV commercials. Prior to the digital revolution, companies used very creative young animators to sell many of their products on TV. Most of the funding for Affairs of the Art has come from money our company made from TV ads, mostly in North America, which we put aside as future production funds.

What do you think the future holds for short films?

The one positive thing now is that you can watch short films online, so your work can easily be seen by a worldwide audience. Monetizing it is the problem. Perhaps efforts could be made to always have short films shown with features in cinemas – this used to be de rigueur in cinemas in Britain in the '50s and '60s.

If we were to go back into lockdown, what cultural or artistic delights would you recommend to alleviate our boredom?

We've actually been in almost total lockdown since the end of March 2020! We've attended quite a few online film festivals and done online presentations and teaching. Joanna's been keeping her hand in by doing online life drawing. We also have a weekly Zoom jazz session with jazz students performing from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. This keeps us sane! Less culturally challenging is our daily diet of Judge Judy while we're cooking or eating (the TV in the kitchen only gets two channels). Joanna also draws the show's fantastic array of colourful miscreants – it's great for character studies.

Affairs of the Art is part of International Competition I8.

Q&A with Valerie Barnhart, dir. The Girl in the Hallway - ClermontFF 2020

Elise Loiseau — 2020-02-04T15:19:41Z

Why does "Little Red Riding Hood" give Jamie nightmares? It's been fifteen years, and the girl in the hallway still haunts him. This is a testament to locked doors. A lullaby sung by wolves with duct tape and polaroids. Not all girls make it out of the forest. There are stories children shouldn't hear.

A remarkably effective, inventive and haunting animation about a real-life case of child abduction.

Trailer

More on the film...

How did this retelling come about?

I'm a big poetry fan, and I came across Jamie DeWolf's live spoken word performance on YouTube. I just knew this had to be a movie – problem was I didn't know how to make a movie or animate for that matter. So I reached out to him, and after getting his blessing, I crawled under a rock and taught myself animation.

Is the story based on a real person who lived in the same building as Xiana Fairchild?

I was very thorough when I fact-checked this story and sadly every piece of this nightmarish witness testimony is true.

What sort of research did you carry out?

The true crime community is very detail-oriented. There are data bases holding archives of newspaper and court testimony which are available with a simple Google search. I'm also an incredibly research heavy creative. I spent months studying how smoke moves. I created dozens of reference videos of pantomime acting. I went to museums to draw. I researched murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. I spent a fair time studying anatomy. I studied the master artists and filmmakers especially from the German Expressionist Movement. I don't feel the need to reinvent the world, so I take details around me and use them to solve all the problems during production. Some days were nice – like spending time in a meadow (when I was observing the area a body could be dumped). Other days were harder – (when I had to study infant autopsy photos, and burned cadavers). In the end I got really good at being able to identify the approximate age of a skull and other disturbing skill sets because of the visual research involved with this production.

Tell us a bit more about your animation style and your use of painting and collage.

2D stop motion was an adventure. I broke rules. I got my hands dirty (seriously, they became permanently stained by charcoal at one point). I experimented. I had to, I was learning, and my only teachers were textbooks and Instagram. The visual key to my entire animation is the attention and time I spent on my transitions between different techniques and styles. I animated this straight ahead (so frame 1, 2, 3, etc.) and in one take. Nothing was done in composite. Everything animated was animated at the same time. Of course that crazy decision was something I made so early on I had no idea what tomfoolery was in store for me when I made these decisions in the first place. In the end I'm glad I worked it out that way. There was so much failure – but learning to not be attached to my work was an interesting shift in my creative practice. I had to destroy everything I was making in order to take the next frame and it taught me how breath life into my drawing. When I allow it to live and die. It's humbling having a sort of “ego death” as a creator. Animation and the meticulous attention to detail really suits my temperaments. So I absolutely want to animate my next film. (This time I have a better sense of what I'm getting into.)

Are you interesting in exploring different animation genres? What do you have in mind for the near future?

I am having so much fun developing a comedy about the sex problems of monsters in Hell. Naturally, it is animation. This time around, it's 2D digital animation. I want to learn how to work digitally – so that will be a good creative challenge for me.

Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?

I came to a story that was already locked down into a short format. So I never had a chance to reflect on filmmaking in a short form format vs. long form as a director. Because the story was in a short format, it was less intimidating and became far more realistic for me to pull off.

Encounters 2019 Arab selection

judy — 2019-10-13T09:39:56Z

Strange Cities Are Familiar, Dir. Saeed Taji Farouky

At once lyrical and political, this film centres on a beautifully understated performance by Mohammad Bakri as Ashraf, a refugee living in London who is unable to return to Palestine to be with his dying son. Ashraf is both stern and tender as the London landscape around him transforms into scenes from his past life and the imagined sufferings of his son in the present. Featuring a brilliant use of sound from the outset the film is atmospheric and rarely overplays the tragedy of Ashraf's plight. The brutal bureaucracy he is up against in his quest to return to his son is given a kindly though impotent human form in the hapless travel agent who cannot find Palestine on his ‘drop down list'. The awkward exchange between the two men is utterly convincing. An assured and well paced film which conveys Ashraf's inner turbulence without too many sentimental turns.

Magic Boat, Dir. Naaman Azhari

'The Magic Boat | Trailer from Naaman Azhari on Vimeo.

In this animated short a mother attempts to persuade her son Khaled to flee their homeland on a ‘magic' boat, using stories of beautiful fish, coloured ships and feasts. The tension between the reality of their situation and the unconvincing stories she conjures to lure Khaled into taking this life threatening journey deepens as her desperation erupts and she utters meaningless pleas, reassuring him that he is a hero while maintaining that there is nothing to be scared of. The film is never still, each line quivers and tilts evoking the experience of both sea travel and the mother's inner turmoil. Interspersed with scenes from the present are fragments of intimate moments between the two laughing, playing, hugging and tugging at one another. The visual and aural effects are so powerful that the melancholy piano soundtrack is unnecessary and slightly takes away from the gravitas of the story. A memorable and heartbreaking work.

Makr, Dir. Hana Kazim

In this horror film a man invites an exorcist into his home to expel a demon from his wife's body. However the trickster exorcist (who enlivens the bodies of the possessed with electrical currents to convince his clients of his efficacy), is himself being tricked as it turns out the couple are not what they seem. While Mansoor Alfeeli gives a strong performance as the exorcist, this film doesn't quite pull off the muddling of faith, deception, reality and delirium that it hopes to. The return to the pendulum clock swinging menacingly in the hallway feels tired and uninspired (by now a clichéd technique used way back in 1915 by D.W. Griffith in his Poe adaptation The Avenging Conscience). Well shot and with some unexpected twists, unfortunately the stakes feel low throughout.

Run (a) Way Arab, Dir. Amrou Al Kadhi

While preparing for his drag performance as an Egyptian deity Queen Za Dream reflects on his mother's own performative femininity, remembering the times he witnessed her adorning herself with eyeshadow, bracelets and belts. After applying her makeup before her dressing table mirror young Nazeem helped her pick out handbags and outfits, witnessing his mother turn her gaze upon herself, admiring herself as her own creation and anticipating the gaze of others. When Nazeem mimics his mother by dressing in her clothes and applying makeup, she is terrified and furious and her response shatters their relationship (the mother is brilliantly played by Ahd whose response could easily have descended into melodrama). Unfortunately the use of music to underscore the story's sensuality and emotion is overplayed and the dreamy flashbacks of young Nazeem putting on his mother's clothes and rubbing her fur coats against his cheek aren't as convincing as the contemporary drag scenes. The film is strongest when it shows how Queen Za Dream (Amrou Al-Kadhi) has turned conflicting memories of his mother into a powerful performative impetus.

Short of the Week: The Boy and The Sea by Samer Ajouri

carrie — 2019-06-17T11:52:14Z

This entrancing, hypnotising and moving animation is now available to watch online!

Once upon a time there was a boy who had joy in drawing the sea. One day, into the bottom of the sea he dove, in hope of escaping war and misery.
The story did not begin with the worldwide TV snatched image of the Syrian child Elan, thrown on the Turkish shores by the waves, and it definitely did not end with it.

Once upon a time there was a boy who had joy in drawing the sea.

One day, into the bottom of the sea he dove, in hope of escaping war and misery.

Alas, he found himself trapped amongst swarms of screens that distorted his image and stole his story.

No, the story did not end, images are still flowing and the world is still watching...

Find out more about Samer Ajouri's work on his website.

ClermontFF2019 Interview with Jonathan Hodgson, director of Roughhouse

Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court team — 2019-03-11T20:01:21Z

In a strange town, the relationship of a group of friends is tested when a new person joins them. The manipulative personality of the new group member has worrying consequences and challenges the loyalty of the friends.

Are there any elements of this story that are autobiographical? Are the friends based on people you know?

The story is inspired by an episode from my late teens when I was living in a student flat in Liverpool. Some of the characters are based on people I knew at the time, although I have changed the names and appearance so that no one is identifiable. I have also altered a lot of the physical locations and story events, but the psychological journey is much the same. We were all good friends at first, but a problem arose when one member of the household couldn't pay the rent and seemed quite happy to let the rest of us to pay his share and do nothing in return. We were young and naive and didn't know how to resolve things in a mature way so things soon got very out of hand.

Why did you choose these setting and time?

I prefer to make films about things I know about, rather than making up fantasies. I could have set the story in a different place and time, but there didn't seem much point when I could make a more interesting and authentic narrative by visually recreating a place and time that I had direct experience of and which had made a very strong impression on me.

Can you tell us a bit about your animation style? What are your influences or inspirations?

The look of the film is largely inspired by the drawings and paintings I was producing as an art student in the late 70s, when I was particularly influenced by German Expressionism. I still have a lot of the artwork from that time lying around and I was interested in recycling it and giving it a second life. The style of the animation bears more than a passing resemblance to this artwork, although it was unfeasible to use analogue artworking techniques. Instead I relied heavily on digital software such as TV Paint, Photoshop and After Effects. For the colour I was inspired by printmaking techniques such as screen printing and lithography that use a limited range of transparent colours, where two colours might be overlaid to create a third. Most of the scenes have a unique palette based on two colours such as green and red or orange and blue. The choice of colour reflects the emotional content of the scene so that happier scenes have stronger, warmer colours, while the unhappier sections tend to have cooler and more muted colours. The one exception to this rule is the party scene, which borrows from the colour palette of my student film Nightclub, which was painted with food colouring, because at the time I couldn't afford to buy coloured inks.The story of Roughhouse is very dialogue-driven with a lot of lip-synch so it needed a more traditional animation technique than some of my other films. I was working with a team of animators from Studio Train-Train so the animation had to be much more carefully planned out. For instance, the characters had to be fully developed at the preproduction stage to help the animators understand who each character was, whereas if I had been doing all the animation myself I would probably have been more spontaneous and made everything up as I went along.

How did you end up making films with both French and British partners?

For the last 20 years, funding for short animation has been virtually non-existent in the UK. There are a few schemes offering small amounts of money, which I applied for, but I was unsuccessful so I initially decided to fund the film myself. I worked on the film on and off for a few years, but it was always on the back burner and didn't progress very far. While attending a European animation festival I noticed that many of the films had French funding so I decided to try and find a French producer. I made contact with Olivier Catherin and eventually he passed my proposal on to Richard Van Den Boom at Papy3D Productions who became the French producer of the film. As I had already spent a lot of time developing the film prior to securing French funding, we agreed that the film should be an English/French co-production with my own company Hodgson Films coming in as the UK producer.

Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?

I tend to make very personal films and I prefer working with the short animation format, which allows me more freedom of expression as a director. A longer length film will require a bigger budget and inevitably more people will want to have a say in the creative process. Also when making a short film you can usually be much looser and more experimental with the technique and narrative. The longer the film, the more you need to concern yourself with traditional filmmaking conventions such as story structure and character development and the visual treatment might need to be more refined to avoid mentally fatiguing your audience, whereas with a short film you can be as rough and expressive as you like.

Roughhouse was shown in International Competition.
You can find more of Jonathan's work on his Vimeo page.

ClermontFF2019 Veljko Popovic, director of Biciklisti

Abla Kandalaft — 2019-02-17T09:31:06Z

Interview with Veljko Popovic, director of the beautiful, hypnotic and playful Biciklisti.

Can you tell us about cycling season? I'm assuming it's a real event!

The spirit of the local people in my hometown is entangled with sports. It can be football, it can be basketball, water polo or cycling. It does not matter, what matters is the iconic position of the sportsman as the alpha male in the pack. He is revered, lusted after and considered to be the best of man. He knows this and is puffed up and in love with himself. I wanted to play with this idea in a comical, satirical way.

The film is imbued with brightness and serenity thanks to the paintwork and colours. Tell us more about your animation style. Is there a particular reason you chose to give it a retro, 1920s feel?

The film is based on the paintings done by the local Split artist Vasko Lipovac. He was in love with the idea of the pre-war small Dalmatian city he knew in his childhood. This nostalgia of a simpler time is a common trait we had and I think most of my townspeople have as well.

What other subject matter would you like to explore using animation? Are you also interested in live action or other genres?

Animation for me connects my love for painting, drawing and art with my love of cinematography and storytelling. It allows me to explore fantastic worlds, explore my imagination and impregnate my idea through every aspect of the film with the use of visual and stylistic choices and depictions of the characters and the world they inhabit. As I cannot see how any other genre would be able to do this as well as animation I am not interested in moving away from animation.

Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?

Oh yes. The very nature of the short form is freedom. The short format allows for more exploration, more expression and it gives the author freedom to be bold and visionary. This is reflected both in the way the storyline and edit of the short film is constructed and in the way the author can approach the visual aspect of the film.

ClermontFF2019 Turbine by Alex Boya

Abla Kandalaft — 2019-02-05T14:52:44Z

Interview in French by the Brasserie du Court team with filming from ARFIS students.

Serait-il correct de voir dans votre film une analogie avec l'impact des nouvelles technologies qui ont tendance à s'immiscer considérablement dans nos vies, au détriment des relations que nous tissons avec les gens ?

Oui, la manière dont la technologie s'est installée dans nos vies nous a changés. Cependant, je ne sais pas si c'est au détriment de la façon dont nous interagissons entre nous. Dans mon film, il y a une résistance à la technologie, mais peu à peu, elle s'infiltre dans la maison sous forme d'appareils banals puis exerce une domination subliminale, jusqu'à ce que ces appareils ménagers deviennent des prolongements du corps. Turbine est campé librement dans les années 1940, au moment où la technologie entre en grande pompe dans l'espace domestique grâce aux premiers appareils électroménagers. L'histoire présente la turbine comme un symbole du modernisme et de la vénération technologique qui ont redéfini les sociétés. La nôtre ne fait pas exception puisque téléphones intelligents, montres et autres gadgets s'invitent aujourd'hui sans vergogne dans notre univers quotidien et nous font, pourrait-on dire, perdre la face. Au lieu de me concentrer sur des éléments contemporains comme les téléphones intelligents et Internet, je souhaitais remonter plus loin dans le passé pour examiner comment la guerre a fait naître ces technologies.

Comment vous est venue l'idée autour de ces engins spécifiques : un avion de guerre, une locomotive ?

Les origines de Turbine, curieusement, ne proviennent pas d'une expérience personnelle, mais d'un songe. J'ai rêvé d'un grand champ et d'un homme de dos. En m'approchant assez pour le voir de profil, j'ai remarqué que son visage était plat. Quand je me suis retrouvé devant lui, j'ai vu une turbine dans son visage creux, d'où bavait une sorte de salive/huile de moteur. L'homme m'a dit de m'approcher pour qu'il puisse murmurer à mon oreille. Je saisissais tout de sa voix mécanique et régulière. Une fois réveillé, j'ai réalisé qu'il s'agissait simplement du son du climatiseur de la chambre à coucher.

Dites-nous-en plus sur votre style d'animation. J'ai l'impression d'avoir déjà eu affaire à ce genre d'esquisses et de dessins dans de vieilles archives datant du 19esiècle…

J'étais illustrateur médical pour l'Université McGill et d'autres clients à Montréal. J'aime faire ce type d'images parce que je perçois le corps de cette façon. La tâche consistant à produire des représentations physiques opaques de la “matière de l'âme“, telle que l'amour qui unit le couple dans le film, a conduit à la création de la série d'images sobrement allumées qui composent le court métrage. Les problèmes de Turbine sont décrits et résolus comme des interventions chirurgicales sur le corps. Alors, j'ai utilisé un style qui s'approche des techniques de gravure sur cuivre, rappelant les encyclopédies à l'approche neutre de Denis Diderot. C'est ce que j'appellel'“expressionnisme medical“.

Y a-t-il des libertés que le format court métrage vous a apportées en particulier ?

Le court métrage offre la possibilité d'être explosif. On n'est pas accablé par la durée. Ma liberté est en grande partie due à l'Office national du film du Canada (ONF), l'un des plus grands laboratoires de courts métrages au monde, où l'on exerce l'art d'explorer et la liberté de s'exprimer. Il est important de savoir que ma famille a émigré de la Bulgarie au Québec quand j'avais deux ans. Cette comédie montre deux univers aux antipodes : ma terre natale – je me suis inspiré des lettres, des objets et des vieilles photos datant de l'époque juste avant ma naissance – et mon enfance nord-américaine typique, au cours de laquelle ce qui s'est le plus rapproché d'un conflit se résume à des batailles avec des figurines Star Wars. À l'ONF, j'ai pu pleinement fouiller dans cette dualité et j'ai aussi eu la chance de travailler dans le même corridor que Theodore Ushev, qui m'a surtout encouragé à définir mes propres règles d'auteur.

You can follow Alex's updates on Twitter @alexboya_

Short of the week: Sorry I Drowned by Studio Kawakeb and MSF

morris — 2019-01-09T08:35:36Z

The animation Sorry I Drowned was broadcast on BBC Arabic's film programme Cinema Badila last week.

This 6-minute animated film “Sorry I Drowned”, created by the Beirut-based Studio Kawakeb and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), is inspired by a letter allegedly found on the body of someone who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea due to the prevailing cynical politics of our day.

The film illustrates the migrant-rejection crisis from the eyes of the migrants taking the Mediterranean route. It speaks about how desperate people are rejected and kicked away in their hour of need, and the consequence of that rejection and inhumane treatment. Although the film illustrates a drowning in the sea, the same rejection and inhumane treatment is taking place in many places on land too.

How far would you go for a safe, dignified life for you and your family? What reception would you expect?

The 5 Most Gruesome Non-Horror Films at This Year's Encounters

Elizabeth Mizon — 2017-09-28T14:44:08Z

Isn't brevity great? And managing to avoid scraping a bit of your septal cartilage off with the edge of your fingernail when you're picking your nose? Two things I really appreciate. Being gross, quickly.

As a filmmaker, film journalist and former film student, I've always preferred punchy shorts to epic features. I also like short distances, making Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival my favourite event of the UK's cultural calendar, being that it's held just 1.41km from my house.
I'm also a fan of filth, discomfort and terror, so I was pleased to find a real stronghold of the grotesque at this year's festival. Though the 2017 programme ended on two sessions dedicated to horror hosted by The Final Girls (who ‘explore feminist themes in horror cinema and highlight the representation and work of women in horror'), there were several wince-worthy films that stood out for me as part of a number of other programmes - thematically grouped by length (in the DepicT! programme) or style (in the animation sessions), for example.

Here are the top 5 films I caught this year that had no place in the festival's horror sessions, but earned a comfortable seat in the bloody chambers of my heart.

Hotdog Hands

Likely my favourite entry of all I saw this year, Hotdog Hands is a hilarious, touching and disturbing animation about a suburban woman trapped in her home, due to the embarrassment of relentlessly growing loads of fingers. The chant of her unfortunate nickname by the local teenage bullies keeps her an isolated, tearful mess (I feel you girl), until one day she receives a mysterious coupon that promises affordable surgery. However, to redeem that coupon, she's first got to make it all the way to the postbox across the street…

Luckily, though, the postbox turns out to be a magic cave full of malnourished baby creatures who require nothing if not a never-ending supply of hotdogs to munch off someone's limbs, and we've all been there. Well done to Matthew Reynolds for making something so surreal, yet so relatable.

[Hot Dog Hands is our short of the week: watch it here in all its gruesomeness]

Don't Think of a Pink Elephant

Another brilliant animated offering from the student body of NFTS (see last year's Man-O-Man) was this piece by Suraya Raja, about a young Liverpudlian girl suffering from OCD. Tasked with looking after her younger brother for an afternoon, she cannot rid herself of the distracting, violent thoughts she experiences around sharp
household objects. It doesn't help that her brother knows this, and finds it fun to make a game out of…
A genuinely sweet mix of family drama, mental health study and coming-of-age narrative, the impressive craft of the claymation holds both its playfulness and gripping, toe-curling body horror. I never would have guessed that a nano-second-length clip of a clay hand getting lacerated by a cheese grater could be so haunting days later. Watch the trailer here.

I Know I Shouldn't Like It, But I Do

This entry into DepicT!, Encounters' 90-seconds-or-less film competition, is a dark and satisfying poetry film that explores those viscerally guilty desires and delights that few of us tend to admit to. Creative writing student-turned-filmmaker Ben Williams-Butt has grasped every last second of his 90-second allowance by taking a piece of writing from his university days, and cutting it beautifully with bleak and grotesque imagery that can't help but make you grimace, and with recognition.
The ‘good-pain' of pressing on a bruise; the relief of pulling hair out of your crack; the fantasy of murdering that kid who's bullying your little brother…okay so none of that's in the film - I don't want to ruin it for you - but we can all relate to my neuroses, yes? Yes.

Neverlanding: a Bad Thriller

It wasn't until half way through this piece that's slowly revealed to be (loosely) about a die-hard Michael Jackson fan that I thought back to the funny title and “uhhhhhhh, geddit”-ed to myself. A dialogue-free, parallel-post-apocalyptic world sees a grimy, lanky man make himself an MJ costume out of foodstuffs. A single glove sewn from
chicken skin, facial ‘prosthetics' made of minced meat and affixed with saliva, and an attempt at wig-making from dyed tagliatelle strings precedes a surreal tribute performance in an old boys' bar in the outback. Even though there was zero incest going on here, the grimy, carnal environment reminded me of the worlds of Bad Boy Bubby and Precious, which tells you all you need to know - except that this was far, FAR more light-hearted. Saying that, it was perhaps not the intention - considering the tagline for this 14 minute short from Belgian director Wim Reygaert is simply: “Escape. Escape. Escape.” Watch the trailer here.

Die Brücke über den Fluss (The Bridge Over the River)

Swiss director Jadwiga Kowalska has managed not only to achieve powerful emotion in the tone of this simple animation, but also to convincingly switch up that tone half way through - a general nono in every Directing 101 manual - without losing an audience. What begins as a heartbreaking glimpse of a lone and suicidal man on the precipice of a bridge develops into a story of hope and community, as one by one people gather on the next bridge along, and shout words of encouragement.
However, on his retreat from the edge, the sheer power of the hordes' celebration on the adjacent bridge ends in the comic relief of mass death. If there were ever an allegory for the reasoning of the depressed individual amongst the ignorant, self-destructive masses, well, here we are. Watch the trailer here.

Elizabeth Mizon is a Bristol-based writer and film director. Follow her follow @elizabethethird.

Short of the Week: Hot Dog Hands by Mark Reynolds

Abla Kandalaft, Elizabeth Mizon — 2017-09-28T14:38:28Z

This truly original yet mildly nauseating multi-award winnerma and Encounters favourite is, in the words of our Bristol-based reviewer Elizabeth Mizon, "a hilarious, touching and disturbing animation about a suburban woman trapped in her home, due to the embarrassment of relentlessly growing loads of fingers."

Hot Dog Hands from Matt Reynolds on Vimeo.

Check out more of Matt Reynold's sublime work on his website.