short film

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Animation

Dead Meat: A Pair of Hungry Seagulls Fight Over a Hotdog in a Quirky Animated Short

Selfish, hungry, and more cunning than he appears, the zany seagull in Adnan Peer Mohamed’s “Dead Meat” sends feathers flying. The animated short opens with the creature scouring a boardwalk for food, and after mistaking a bolt for a snack, he snatches an entire hotdog only to find a fellow bird is after the same sausage. Mohamed is currently a student at Vancouver Film School, and you can find more of his animations on Vimeo and Instagram.

Animation

A Superstitious Cast Kicks Off Montréal’s 13th Annual Stop-Motion Festival in a Carnivalesque Animation

To launch its 13th year, a bizarre animation for the 2021 Festival Stop Motion Montréal evokes eerie tropes and superstitions: a drooling pug morphs into an unfriendly black cat, a gardener reveals a sharp scissor hand, and a once-vibrant fire turns into clouds of soot. Set to a lively track by Nick Lavigne that quickly bends into a sinister tone, the claymation teaser by Rome-based animator Gianluca Maruotti opens the festival, which will show 93 short films from September 10 to 19. You can find the event’s lineup—which includes appearances by Andrea Love’s Tulip and the modest product-testing rabbit named Ralph—on its site, Vimeo, and Instagram.

Amazing

An Absurd Mockumentary Follows a Disheveled Robot that Mooches Off His Ornery Creator

Brian and Charles are just like any other roommates. They enjoy bedroom dance parties and competitive games of Scrabble, pull dated clothes from each others’ closets, and even argue over whose food is whose—Charles is notorious for sneaking bites of Brian’s vegetables when he’s not around. In most senses, the bond between the perpetually disheveled pair is typical of other friendships, but one thing sets them apart: Charles is a bumbling, redundant robot Brian built during an intense depression one winter, and now they’re stuck together.

Similarly brash and awkward, the quirky duo stars in a brilliant short film written and directed by Jim Archer. The mockumentary-style production follows their shared routines of eating berries and wandering their bucolic cottage property, before capturing the cabbage-fueled fight that threatens their bond.

Archer shared some behind-the-scenes details on the low-budget production with Short of the Week, and you can find an extensive archive of his short films on his site.

Documentary

An Advocacy Campaign Spotlights the Ordinary Lives of People with Disabilities in a Lighthearted Short Film

To kick off their joint WeThe15 campaign, the International Paralympic Committee and International Disability Alliance commissioned a short film that takes a humorous and playful approach to showcasing the ordinary lives of people with disabilities. Produced by Sam Pilling of Pulse Films, the ad uses a series of vignettes to spotlight members of the disability community, who speak to their joyful, frustrating, and routine experiences alongside the discrimination and stereotypes many confront on a daily basis.

WeThe15 will help launch the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games and be shown at the opening ceremony on August 24. It hopes to spur greater visibility, inclusion, and accessibility for the 1.2 billion people living with disabilities worldwide, making it the largest marginalized group at about 15 percent of the global population. We’re also enjoying “Superhuman ’21,” a similarly lighthearted film by Rina Yang.

Animation

A Striking Stop-Motion Short Creates Uncanny Visual Effects Using Matches

Digital effects are no match for Tokyo-based designer Tomohiro Okazaki, whose mesmerizing new animation is a striking feat of stop-motion techniques. Using squirts of paint, strips paper, and other household objects, Okazaki deftly manipulates matchsticks into dozens of individual studies that endlessly bend and buckle their basic structure. Each analog distortion sparks a host of others that become increasingly complex and speedy, spanning from simple tricks of the hand to more elaborate clips of exploding match heads and paper morphing into fully formed sticks.

Okazaki heads the graphic design and animation studio Swimming, and you can find more clips and glimpses into his painstaking process on YouTube and Instagram. (via The Kids Should See This)

Documentary Photography

An Insightful Short Film Follows a 90-Year-Old Fisherman Who Clears Plastic from Bali’s Coasts

Each day, 90-year-old Wayan gathers his nets and mesh sacks and sets his small boat out on the coast of Bali. The jewel-toned waters used to be a prime location for fishing, a profession Wayan practiced throughout childhood and continued for decades, but today, instead of reeling in massive catches and struggling to drag them back to shore, he’s finding an overabundance of disposable containers and garbage where the once-thriving marine populations used to live—some reports estimate that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.

In her impactful short film “Voice Above Water,” San Francisco-based director Dana Frankoff visits Wayan at his coastal home and chronicles his adapted routine: rather than harvesting food for his family and community, he scoops up wrappers, bottles, and other refuse and carries the discarded material back to the beach for recycling. “The story is a glimpse into how one human is using his resources to make a difference and a reminder that if we all play our part we can accomplish something much greater than ourselves,” Frankoff says.

“Voice Above Water” is the director’s debut film, and you can follow her work on Vimeo. (via Laughing Squid)