Film board offers animated shorts
If you want to know how Dracula became Dracula, you can check out a new animated take on the world’s most enduring vampire legend — courtesy of Canada’s National Film Board. Or perhaps you’re interested in the story about the polar bear that turned to stone. That’s available too on the NFB’s free online site at nfb.ca.
Canada’s government film agency is offering free online premières of five outstanding animated shorts. All of them reassert the board’s international reputation in the field of animated film — a reputation extending back some 70 years to the glory days of the endlessly experimental Norman McLaren.
And, in the case of this latest batch of online gems, all have their distinctly creepy moments.
The most visually striking and unsettling is Bone Mother, which has to do with an arrogant 15thcentury prince whose quest for immortality takes him to the Devil’s grandmother and her house of bones, where his folly awakens the spirit of the dreaded Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Dracula. The Montreal animation team of Sylvie Trouvé and Dale Hayward takes risks with this one: an almost impenetrable darkness dominates the early moments.
But then the miracles of stopmotion animation, 3D printing technology and thousands of meticulously hand-painted models take over and bring the story to a frightening climax.
Echo Henoche, an Inuk artist from Labrador, makes her animation debut with Shaman, which is based on a story her grandfather used to tell her about the origins of the big stone across the harbour from her Nunatsiavut home. Legend has it that it was once a savage polar bear that terrorized the community — a story exquisitely told in five minutes of classic hand-drawn animation.
Nadine, from multi-disciplinary film artist Patrick Péris, deals with shy teenager Sam’s encounter with the most beautiful girl in the world. Sam’s over-active imagination gives him many terrifying moments before he summons the courage to introduce himself.
The angst of adolescence is also the driving force behind Shop Class, a dark, funny and ultimately uplifting animated comedy from Vancouver filmmaker Hart Snider. It has to do with the terrors of shop class for a junior high guy who’s having anxiety problems about growing up and his own identity. Actor Fred Ewanuick, who played Hank on Corner Gas, supplies the voice for both the student and the macho teacher who terrorizes him.
Finally, there’s Iranian-born animator Ehsan Gharib’s dazzling Deyzangeroo, winner of the coveted Golden Dove at Germany’s International Leipzig Festival.
It’s inspired by a ritual still performed in the Iranian port city of Bushehr — a ritual aimed at warding off evil spirits and ensuring the return of the moon when it goes into eclipse. It only lasts four minutes but its eerie impact is brought off by both classic handpainted animation and time-lapse photography.