Poem by Maria Popova. Reading by Nick Cave. Animation and direction by Daniel Bruson. Music by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
A note from the filmmaker: “How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? The finitude and yet vastness of both our deeds and the cosmos through a fleeting moment of contemplation.”
But We Had Music was made as part of Universe in Verse, an annual charitable gathering that celebrates the wonder of reality through science and poetry.
Directed by Claude Cloutier.
Synopsis: Bad Seeds takes us to a bizarre world populated by carnivorous plants that can change shapes the way a chameleon changes colors. Cloutier connects growth with rivalry and evolution with competition, crafting an increasingly shocking duel that’s peppered with allusions to the western, the Cold War, board games, and much more.
Written and directed by Janet Perlman.
Synopsis: A girl takes a wild ride on the metro in Montreal. Travelling from station to station, she encounters an array of colorful characters in a bizarre musical journey that’s peppered with hilarious and unexpected incidents.
This joyful, heartwarming animated film portrays Montreal in all its vitality, creativity and diversity, with plenty of humor and good cheer, to the tune of Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s Complainte pour Ste-Catherine.
The Girl with the Red Beret has won numerous awards, including Best International Short Film at the Los Angeles Animation Festival and Best Canadian Short at FIFEM Montreal Children’s Film Festival.
Written and directed by Julien Regnard, whose credits as a storyboard artist include Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner and My Father’s Dragon.
Synopsis: A couple rushes out of a glamorous party. On their way home, an argument leads to a brutal car accident. When George regains consciousness, Christina has disappeared. He will then experience a real descent into hell.
A surreal journey through the interconnections between all things.
Directed and animated by Duncan Hatch, a Boston based artist, animator, and illustrator.
He has illustrated posters and ad materials for bands and has animated television commercials, educational media, music videos and short films.
Synopsis: In The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, Miles Morales struggles to balance his responsibilities as a teenager, friend, and student while acting as Brooklyn’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
After a particularly challenging day living with these pressures, Miles experiences a panic attack that forces him to confront the manifestations of his anxiety and learn that reaching out for help can be just as brave an act as protecting his city from evil.
The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story was developed and produced in the inaugural year of Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Leading and Empowering New Storytellers program, a 9-month leadership training program that provides candidates from underrepresented groups with an opportunity to gain valuable leadership experience in animation.
Two characters discover an interesting new object, and learn about what it means to share.
Created by Annie-nominated Michael Ruocco, an artist whose credits include Looney Tunes Cartoons, The Cuphead Show and BoJack Horseman.
Written and Directed by Tyler March & Eric Paperth. Music and Lyrics by Rob Tanchum.
Synopsis: Jealous of the Sun’s stardom, the Moon bails into space in search of a planet that actually cares about him. Will he find his place in the universe, or is he destined to be a lonely loser forever?
Director Antoni Sendra created this short film about his daughter using more than 2,000 hand-painted frames.
Sendra is a freelance director from Spain who specializes in mixed media projects. He combines animation, live action, stop motion and collage in his work, which includes commercials, documentaries, music videos and main titles.
My Parent, Neal is a short documentary about director Hannah Saidiner and her parent as they discuss her parent’s gender transition.
Saidiner describes her creative process as such:
“The film was made using a combination of rotoscoped and hand-drawn animation. Frames were first drawn digitally in TVPaint, then printed out. Each frame was colored by hand with colored pencil and watercolors, at 1/4 of their original scale in size. This scale change then heightened the tangibility and texture of the coloring materials when scanned and enlarged to fit the screen.”
Directed by Martine Chartrand. Paint-on-glass animation shot with a 35mm camera.
Synopsis: MacPherson recounts the friendship between singer-songwriter Félix Leclerc and Frank Randolph Macpherson, a Jamaican chemical engineer and university graduate who worked for a pulp and paper company.
Macpherson inspired Leclerc, who wrote a song about the log drives and entitled it MacPherson.
Directed by Uri Kranot & Michelle Kranot.
Synopsis: The Hangman at Home by American poet Carl Sandburg was written almost 100 years ago and is still as relevant and more poignant than ever, as our world slides into dark times.
Through a series of paintings bringing together eclectic fragments of life, strange human behaviors are highlighted. Eccentric or banal, they plunge us into intimacy or embarrassment.
This portrait ultimately suggests that we human beings are much more similar than different.
Directed by Janine Nadeau.
Synopsis: A short film adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, Harvey depicts a young boy who candidly recalls the spring day when his world turned upside down.
Told through the eyes of a child with an overflowing imagination, the short film examines bereavement and coping with the loss of a parent.
In February, 2010, the Chilean town of Juan Fernandez slept not knowing a tsunami was approaching. Luckily, 12-year-old Martina felt a tremor and was able to warn and save everyone in town.
Directed by Leo Campasso, Antonio Balseiro and Carlos Balseiro.
Directed by Éva Darabos at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary, who describes the short film as “a surreal farewell to a blockhouse area.”
Bye Little Block! screened at film festivals worldwide and won numerous awards, including Best Design at Ottawa International Animation Festival (2020).
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