Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

"Someday Never " by Stephen Hawkins

We only saw two showings Sunday as part of the Philadelphia Film Fest, The overarching theme of this collection was supposed to be influence by the graphic novel movement. I'm not certain, though, that this assessment came from the animators themselves. It seemed, instead, like a grouping of primarily narrative pieces.

First on the program was "Someday Never" by Stephen Hawkins, a very simple story about a sailor who tries to rescue a friend, stuck in an enchanted bar. This was hand drawn with very sketch-like chalk drawings on primary colored backgrounds. The music that accompanied the piece added to the eerie atmosphere.

Next was an animation that combines various techniques, "Fish Heads Fugue and Other Tales for Twilight" by Lauren Indovina and Lindsey Mayer-Beug, both graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design. The film combines hand puppets, cutouts, cell animation, computer cutouts and computer puppets into a 3D world. This one isn't strictly narrative, but rather a play within a play, where an elderly character sets up a magical puppet theater in which scene crank back and forth on gears while a young girl runs frantically through the sets, discovering new scenes. While the connection to graphic novels isn't obvious, it's an interesting experimental piece.

An interesting back story to this piece: Lauren and Lindsey are the twin daughters of filmmaker Carolyn Beug, who won an award for the Van Halen video "Right Now" and who died on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001. Their father, John Beug, is SVP in charge of filmed production for Warner Brothers' record division.

Then came "Tick-Tack" by Bulgarian animator Boris Despodov. This short was pencil and pastel on paper, animated by computer. The very stylized drawings depict anthropomorphic birds, who wear human clothes and act much like suburban businessmen and housewives. However, the pregnant wife of one hapless bird is hiding a secret. This short was very distinctive, with an effective punchline. However, it dragged in parts, as the pregnant wife spends long minutes just staring out the window.

"Der Ostwind" by D. Kohl Glass was brilliant. It tells the story of a German World War I fighting ace who finally meets an opponent who can challenge him. The film incorporates live actors and initially looks so much like stock footage from World War I that you wonder when the animation begin. Finally, you realize that everything but the people and perhaps some props are animated! Not only is the animation exception, but the story is gripping, as well. Very impressive. The short's official site offers a finished trailer, and you can also view a very old concept page for the film at GeoCities.

Next up was "Surly Squirrel" by Canadian animator Peter Lepeniotis, who has been an animator on several big budget films, including "Toy Story 2" and Fantasia/2000. He has worked as animator supervisor at various studios in Canada. The 3D computer animated film tells the story of a squirrel and a rat, intent on stealing pizza from a trash can, under the noses of a raccoon and a flock of pigeons. At the same time, bandits rob the bank across the street. The parallels are hilarious, the characterizations are fun, definitely inspired by classic Sunday morning cartoons. This was a fun romp and an audience favorite. The story of the making of the film can be found at Autodesk.

Following this was a very experimental piece, "Jona/Tomberry" by Rosto A.D., based on the graphic novel, Mind the Gap. This is 3D computer animated and eerily dreamlike. As the synopsis on the official site summarizes: "Borges meets Murnau in a spinning nightmare, and the baby sings, "No, not be scared, old bird, to awake and see I am dreaming you." While the short is filmed in English, there are French subtitles. The words are often hard to make out above the music, so I was reduced to falling back on my French, which I haven't used since college. While it's a rich, textured environment, it wasn't my favorite.

This was followed by a somewhat lighter piece, "The Legend of the Scarecrow" by Spanish animator Marcos Besas, which was a much simpler story, a fable or origin myth. Besas is a 1991 graduate of the Tisch School of Arts and has received over 30 awards in various international festivals. The short was beautifully done, with very painterly hand-drawn characters and backgrounds. It tells the story of a scarecrow who gets bored and decides to befriend the crows he's supposed to be scaring.

The last short we got to see was "The Mysterious Geographical Explorations of Jasper Morello" by Australian animator Anthony Lucas. This one was richly animated with a very distinct animation style, done entirely in silhouette. Set in a world known as Gothia, it's very much an H.G. Wells sort of futuristic world, with people wearing Victorian clothes and exploring their world in steam-powered airships. Buildings and ships are spindly and intricate, as are many of the characters.

It reminded me of 19th century shadow plays, which were performed with wooden puppets behind a screen, with light creating the shadows.

The story is about a narrator, Jasper, who is beginning to doubt his skills because of a tragic accident. He and his crew stumble across a possible cure for the plague that has been running rampant in Gothia. Of course, everything comes at a price. The great story and the superb animation combined for a breathtaking short.

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for the final short, "Milch" by Igor Kovalyov, because we had to catch a cab across town to catch our last film of the day. The film had started late, much to our irritation. We'd arrived 45 minutes early, but it was nearly an hour before we were seated. In fact, the manager, whose nametag said "Marlene," thought it was a good idea to bring half of the line up to the front of the theater in preparation for entering, since there are two entrances. However, this meant that people who had been patiently waiting for even longer than we had were entering at the same time as people who had arrived only 15 minutes before the showing.

I don't know what the holdup was, because even though the other film ran late, they took forever to clear the theater. Finally, some people wearing all-access badges exited. I didn't look at their badges carefully. It's possible they were filmmakers, greeting their public. But even so, the manager could have politely asked them to continue their conversation in the lobby.

These sort of organizational problems, as The Gryphon reminded me, are a perennial problem when the staff is comprised wholly of volunteers. Maybe they can do more training with the theater managers to give them ideas of how to handle issues.

As it was, we made it to the Cinema at Penn just in time for them to begin seating, and since it was a big theater, we had no trouble finding a seat. This was the genre flick, Tokyo Zombie by Sakichi Sato, based on a manga by Yûsaku Hanakuma. We were both looking forward to it because it promised to be a fun blend of various genres. It blended a zombie movie, a comedy and a martial arts movie.

In this case, the martial arts form was jujitsu, which isn't something you normally see in films, since it involves grappling instead of dramatic punches, kicks and flips. However, since the primary fear with a zombie is getting bit, when the heroes are in close proximity to them as they grapple, it adds to the fear factor. So here it worked.

There were plenty of surprises in this film, which followed the various genres to the extent that they found useful. But they didn't stick to any of them strictly. The film flies off in unanticipated directions, which helps keep it moving. The theater was packed full of college-aged people, who laughed a lot.

It occurred to me as we talked about it afterwards at the nearby 24-hour diner, where this time I managed to get only one scoop of ice cream instead of a huge sundae, that most of the movies we saw during the film festival made use of humor. I love sitting in a crowded theater and hearing people laugh. If there's one kind of movie that I like to see in a full theater, it's a comedy. The more laughter the better.

Overall, the films we saw met my expectations. I wanted to see things that you couldn't find in just any theater or video store. I wanted to see new ideas, new approaches, unknown directors and rare films. We got to do a lot of that. Some we liked better than others, but all of them we enjoyed enough to feel like it was worth it.

More Musings from the 2006 Philadelphia Film Fest:

April 3, 2006 - Strange Desires

April 4, 2006 - Sweet Masterpieces

April 10, 2006 - Indie Life

Musings on the 2005 Philadelphia Film Fest:

April 11, 2005 - Film Style 5+

Musings on the 2004 Philadelphia Film Fest:

April 12, 2004 - Indulging in Film

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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