Four National Film Board of Canada animated shorts are headed to the festival, with the Oscar-winning animator’s latest, along with Michèle Lemieux’s pinscreen film, ‘Le tableau (The Painting)’ among the films selected for the official short film competition.
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) will head to the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival with four short films, including three in the official competition and one in the “Off-Limits Competition.” The Annecy Festival takes place June 9-15.
Short Films – Official Competition
Maybe Elephants by Torill Kove: A Mikrofilm/NFB co-production
- Three rebellious teenage daughters, a restless mother, a father struggling with potatoes, and maybe some elephants find themselves in Nairobi. What could possibly go wrong?
- Kove is a Norwegian-born filmmaker and animator living in Canada. Three of her films (including My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts and Me and My Moulton) have been nominated for Academy Awards, with The Danish Poet, narrated by Liv Ullmann, winning the Oscar in 2007.
Le tableau (The Painting) by Michèle Lemieux: An NFB production
- The film revisits the tragic fate of Queen Mariana of Austria and her 1652 portrait by painter Velázquez.
- Lemieux (Here and the Great Elsewhere, Stormy Night) is one of the few artists to animate on the pinscreen. The instrument she uses, dubbed the NEC (for nouvel écran or “new screen”), comprises 240,000 pins set into a 52 x 39-centimetre screen. There are only two working Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreens in the world today.
Miserable Miracle by Ryo Orikasa: A Miyu Productions/NFB/New Deer co-production
- Inspired by the poems and drawings of Henri Michaux, Miserable Miracle takes animation to the breathtaking limits of language and perception, with Denis Lavant’s feverish voiceover in French and Tony Robinow’s in English. The film won the Grand Prize for Short Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF).
- Orikasa, born in Ibaraki, Japan, and now based in Tokyo, first came to prominence in 2015 with Datum Point, winner of the Golden Zagreb at Animafest Zagreb and Best Experimental or Abstract Animation Award at OIAF.
Short Films – Off-Limits Competition
Corpus and the Wandering by Jo Roy (7 min): An NFB production
- One dancer, one body, one phone. In a time of collective alienation and technological mass control, one woman rediscovers her soul and reclaims her mind. The experimental film uses mixed techniques: video compositing, body close-ups filmed with iPhone, and stop-motion.
- Roy’s films have been recognized by the Cannes Lions, the British Council, and CNN Create. Roy’s interdisciplinary training combines a lifelong, intensive study of dance with technical filmmaking. Corpus and the Wandering is her first film with the NFB.
Source: The NFB
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
