Is a simple, touching story of a character remembered: Uncle Stephen, the smartly dressed writer of letters sitting at the kitchen table. Childhood Memories, tangents and details of family life are recalled and reexamined. The animated pen and ink drawing echoing the pen and ink writing of Uncle Stephen: crossings out, drips, things are done and re-done. It’s quietly enigmatic and poignant.
Find out what makes the director tick on her blog, Circles Squares and Lines.
I love cardboard and I always have trouble putting it into the recycler. Yeah it might be a fire hazard and possible rat nest but you never know when it might come in handy, right?
Well, I guess Saul Freed would agree and maybe if, like him I also had some yarn, a gravelly-voiced, Jazz narrator and a talent for animation, I might be able to make something like The Red Suitcase.
There’s a whole lot of home-made charm in this animation, with its painted cardboard scenery and people that look like knitted versions of Mr Peanut’s hill-billy cousins. There’s a lot of neat story telling moments and fun in here, but there’s a serious slice of life story behind the off-cute style. It’s the small life of a fix-it man and what happens when a stranger comes to town. Someone crosses the tracks. and things change. Suffice to say it involves jazz, wicked, wicked Jazz.
My mother used to warn me that I might turn into something.
There’s a deep truth in this film. Alright, I admit it, I once had a partner and… she turned into a triangle. I didn’t deal with it very well. There, I said it. I’ve come clean. Sometimes geometry gets in the way of life. I knew somebody who turned into a rhombus. A former flatmate of mine even turned into a 4 dimensional hyper cube AHHHHHHRRRGHH! It’s a modern plague!
Yasmeen Ismail’s simple, uncluttered, hand drawn style gives this slice of life with a twist, real heart. This charming little film has genuine warmth and humour and more importantly shows how to deal with interpersonal triangulation. It turns out you need a hot oven and a tolerance for infanticide.
Now, is it lunchtime yet, I’m hungry.
Doodle, doodle, doodle… Doodling is better than working. It helps you think. Think deep thoughts about the universe (does it end?) and make lists: cake, pie, chips, soap… maybe I should live in a boat?…cake. I’ve drawn a giant snail and a man with one leg longer than the other. A parrot driving a car on a world the size of a balloon held by a cat faced boy. I leave notes to my future self which I cannot decipher. I’ve done it and I’ll do it again in my sketchbook.
The Imperfectionist uses the crazy JUXTAPOSITIONS (sorry I have to break off and put 50 pence in the JUXTAPOSITION box) found in a sketchbook to tell the untidy, ink-stained story of an illustrator who has one of those god-awful, embarrassing “relationship” conversations with his mum. Its all played out across the pages of his sketchbook: giant cats, stop signs and street scenes, big sneakers and inkblots, wallpaper-balloons, funny creatures, weird birds, little people, shopping lists, a rogue-independent foot and a series of unflattering self portraits all explained by the effortlessly droll Julian Rhind-Tutt.
Are you alone? Are you some kind of man-beast unworthy of human affection? Watch this. You won’t find the secret to a healthy relationship but you will see some stylish, scribbly doodles brought to life.
Director Grant Orchard’s black comedy about a man who makes the mistake of going to visit a pal in small town Glaringly. It turns out to be Paranoia-central, chock full of surveillance equipment and suspicious towns folk who just can’t wait to mob-up. Our hero tries to help someone out but thanks to cctv spies jumping to the wrong conclusions and the gutter press spreading them about, he gets on the wrong side of an angry mob. It’s all done in the funky retro 8 bit style of an old timey video game.
Thank goodness this sort of thing could never happen here.
Some of our animations have adult themes
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