A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s brightest and best animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all of its multi-coloured, variously shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2016
Animation Now 2016
Our longstanding animation programmer Malcolm Turner, now head honcho at the Melbourne International Animation Festival and guest curator at festivals beyond, offers a miscellany of the brightest and best from a year’s worth of exploration.
Rising stars, including New Zealand’s own, jostle with longstanding masters; the playful with the profound. Here are flights of cinematic magic of an individuality that only animators can bring to the screen – delivering a cornucopia of creative excitement to reward any moviegoer.
If you’re looking to sample the international animation ecosystem in all of its multi-coloured, variously shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.
Jazz Orgie 2015
This glorious blast of animated geometry could be Kandinsky in motion.
Spring Jam 2016
A wildly fun, perspective-bending runaway tale of a deer, a record player and an impromptu orchestra of native birds.
Stems 2015
An animated puppet film about how to make an animated puppet film out of ‘stuff’.
Black Seed 2014
An old man and a hungry raven are surrounded by loneliness in a secluded cabin. A scene of quivering dread captured in animated sketches. Hand painted.
Glove 2015
A doco of sorts tells the true story of a silicon glove that may drift to the ends of the universe after becoming separated from an orbiting space station.
A Coat Made Dark 2015
Navigating a feral film noir world, a man follows the orders of a cosmically ordained dog to wear a woman’s coat for protection. Creepy.
UUUUUU 2015
Sometimes the best thoughts come to you at 3.00 am. Against the black of night, simple white lines push those thoughts into sharp relief.
Go to City ELE 2015
A little piggy ventures into a gorgeously rendered world of ELE(phants). Being trunkless can be lonely in such a world, but tides turn and all things change.
Orange 2014
A dinghy containing a giant boot sails through an ocean of flaming orange hair on the head of a ravenous madman. Antic comic-book surrealism in hallucinogenic colour.
Corpses in the Drawer 2015
A rolling, gleeful carnival of underworld murder, mayhem and inspired dismemberment.
Fish 2014
Somewhere on a still ocean, a lone fisherperson snags an airborne grand piano. Lin Zhang’s CGI has the glossy finish of surrealist painting.
Velodrool 2015
A nicotine-addicted racing cyclist finds the path to the finish line littered with peculiar distractions and hazards.
The Sparrow’s Flight 2016
Tom Schroeder’s intensely personal tribute to his late collaborator Dave Herr incorporates an astonishing visual encyclopaedia of animation styles.