Animation Express
(2009)Streaming Episode Guide
Season 2
Runaway
Episode 13 - 8-30-2010
Cordell Barker, director of the Oscar®-nominated films The Cat Came Back and Strange Invaders, is back with Runaway. Set to the rousing music of Ben Charest (Triplets of Belleville), this animated short takes you on a journey that is both funny and disastrous.
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Land of the Heads
Episode 12 - 8-23-2010
This animated short tells the tale of a vampire forced go out every night to separate children from their heads. The reason? His vain wife wants to replace her wrinkled head with one that is young and pretty. What a horror! Especially since the lady of the house is never satisfied and the heads keep piling up on the floor. How will our reluctant vampire ever get out of this vicious cycle?
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Vive la rose
Episode 11 - 8-16-2010
Based on the last recording by one of Newfoundland's foremost traditional music performers, Emile Benoit's tender delivery of the 18th century French song is the heart of Vive la rose. The story of unrequited love and tentative obsession throughout the beloved's life, sickness and early death is the narrative focus, accompanied by an emotional interpretation of Benoit's strong Newfoundland French accent and wavering old man's voice. Vive la rose is animation on location, rooting the film in a location that evokes the past, and combines ink drawings with a variety of romantic and associative elements and objects.
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Paradise
Episode 10 - 8-09-2010
The daily routine in an American town depicted through stop-motion tin miniatures.
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Sainte Barbe
Episode 9 - 8-02-2010
This animated short about men and hair tells the story of little bald Léon and of his grandfather, an old man with a bushy black beard. A thing of legend, the grandfather's beard seems endowed with magic powers. It even turns caterpillars into butterflies! But Léon's grandmother wants to cut off the unkempt beard and regain the distinguished-looking man she married, who wore just a tidy moustache. When the old man's asleep, grandmother prowls, scissors in hand, but Léon's keeping a watchful eye on her. As long as grandpa lives, the beard will stay.
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Invasion of the Space Lobsters
Episode 8 - 7-26-2010
When an advanced race of giant lobsters from outer space land on Earth, no one can figure out why they've come. A complete failure to communicate on both ends leads to panic and pandemonium. Why are they here? What do they want? In this clever throwback to the ‘50s B-movie, a small neighbourhood learns the value of clear communication.
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Engine 371
Episode 7 - 7-19-2010
This animated short looks at the building of Canada's transcontinental railroad with wit and whimsy. Engine 371 illustrates the struggle humans have with nature and how this fundamental tension united a country. A film without words.
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Flutter
Episode 6 - 7-12-2010
In this short animation, a young boy takes a flying leap away from normal, waves goodbye to his classmates, and disappears into the cityscape and beyond. At the same time, a young girl is inspired to reinvent her space with art.
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Here and There
Episode 5 - 7-05-2010
In this animated short, filmmaker Diane Obomsawin shows how childhood can be a chaotic time, especially if you're bouncing back and forth between two continents.
With engaging candour and gentle humour, Obomsawin fleshes out an uncertain identity and takes control of her life. Using drawings on paper and digitized snippets of fabric, she creates a whimsical world of simple lines and pastel tones.
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HA'Aki
Episode 4 - 6-28-2010
In this short abstract-impressionist film the animation and music were made simultaneously in an organic process of symbiotic creativity. Filmmaker Iriz Pääbo tells the highly subjective story of a complete hockey game using a new cinematic vocabulary she calls "animbits." Pääbo readily admits she is not the biggest fan of Canada's national game, so the great, though highly underappreciated NHL stalwart of the '60s and '70s, Eric Nesterenko, was her hockey muse in this artistic journey. A lyrical and wonderfully unorthodox interpretation of hockey.
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Come Again in Spring
Episode 3 - 6-21-2010
This gentle tale about mortality works in subliminal ways. When an old man is visited by Death at his home in the meadows, he has to delve deep to secure more time for himself. Does he have the strength to find the answers he needs? Can we negotiate our time on earth? How do we reconcile our mortal fate? A lyrical look at a reality as old as humanity, yet as young as today. Based on a story by Richard Kennedy.
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The Necktie
Episode 2 - 6-14-2010
A mixture of puppet and hand-drawn animation, The Necktie is the story of Valentin and his quest to find meaning in his life. Stuck in a dead-end job, he has forgotten all about the things that used to bring him joy. Years pass, and boredom replaces all his aspirations and hope for the future. It is only on his 40th birthday, when he rediscovers an old accordion hidden in the depths of his closet, that he regains his lust for life.
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Sleeping Betty
Episode 1 - 6-07-2010
In this animated short, Sleeping Betty is stuck in bed, victim to a strange bout of narcolepsy. The King calls on his subjects to rescue her and they all respond to the call: Uncle Henry VIII, Aunt Victoria, an oddly emotional alien, a funky witch and a handsome prince. But will a kiss really be enough to wake the sleeping princess? The film, drawn in ink, is a classic example of the anachronistic and playful world of Claude Cloutier.
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Season 1
The Spine
Episode 13 - 8-24-2009
Animated by Chris Landreth.
In this animated short, Mr. Landreth returns with a poignant story of redemption that takes us into the relationship between a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction after 26 years of marriage.
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The Man Who Slept
Episode 12 - 8-17-2009
A young woman shares her life with a sleeping ghost. She lives in the denial of a loss that has left her all alone. This vibrantly textured animated film is a work about resilience, a journey to night’s end that culminates in an awakening. Without words
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Rosa Rosa
Episode 11 - 8-10-2009
While war is thundering at the gates of the city, Rosa and her lover live serenely together, trying to preserve a fragile normality. Rosa Rosa is the interweaving of individual and collective fates via a love story simply told by the couple themselves. In this animation using reworked photos, Félix Dufour-Laperrière offers an unusual graphic world where public and private spaces overlap.
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Retouches
Episode 10 - 8-03-2009
Like the waves that sweep the beach tirelessly, this animated short film evolves into a series of repetitive movements that gradually correct and transform our environment. Georges Schwizgebel plays with perception and representation, and enjoys disrupting the balance of forms. In a brushstroke, an escalator becomes an athletic track, in a few brushstrokes, the ripples of a hair reveal a forest shaken by the wind, in a spectacular reversal of point of view, a tennis court rotates around a motionless ball. Oscillating between dream and reality, Retouches is the work of a graphic tightrope walking freely on the wire of animation cinema. Film without words.
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Rains
Episode 9 - 7-27-2009
As a sudden downpour lashes the city, all seek shelter. Just for a moment, time expands into immobility. Human activity slows down and almost stops. Some wait in a bus shelter, others are set on going out, if their umbrellas will open. Wiser, the birds just wait out the storm. When the rain stops, the bubble bursts and life goes on. A pencil-drawn animation film.
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Madame Tutli-Putli
Episode 8 - 7-20-2009
This stop-motion animated film takes viewers on an exhilarating existential journey into the fully imagined, tactile world of Madame Tutli-Putli. As she travels alone on the night train, weighed down with all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past, she faces both the kindness and menace of strangers. Finding herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure, adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons.
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Hungu
Episode 7 - 7-13-2009
Under the African sun, a child walks in the desert with his kin. Death is prowling, but a mother's soul resurrected by music will return strength and life to the child when he becomes a man. Inspired by the grace and raw beauty of African rock paintings, Nicolas Brault paints a story without borders, with the humanity and elegance of a universal narrator.
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Forming Game
Episode 6 - 7-06-2009
This animated short from Malcolm Sutherland is an engaging dance of shapes and sounds. The "game" is played by opening the box, unfolding the board and placing shapes on it that you manipulate with your hands. There are no winners or losers in this game; the fun is in the creative way the forms unfold. Features a score by Luigi Alleman and music by Ravi Shankar.
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Drux Flux
Episode 5 - 6-29-2009
Part figurative, part abstract, Drux Flux is an animated short comprised of fast-flowing images showing modern people crushed by industry. Inspired by One-Dimensional Man, by philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the filmmaker deconstructs industrial scenes and their terrifying geometry to show the inhumanity of progress.
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Subservience
Episode 4 - 6-22-2009
In this animated short, the selfishness of the bourgeoisie and the oppression and exploitation of its servants take centre stage as a puppet show presents the tragicomedy of a society in its death throes.
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Robes of War
Episode 3 - 6-15-2009
This animated short is a lyrical exploration of the impact of war on women, their bodies and their families. Bringing a feminist sensibility to a contemporary issue, it looks at what happens when war insinuates itself inside the very being of a woman—she who once gave life.
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Spare Change
Episode 2 - 6-08-2009
This animation short by Ryan Larkin (Walking, Street Musique, etc.) recounts some “comical experiences” Larkin had during his many years as a panhandler in Montreal. It tells the story of Astral Pan, a street beggar (voiced by Larkin himself), who takes us on a wild journey from the sidewalks of a wintry Montreal day, to the gates of Heaven and Hell and back. The great filmmaker passed away before finishing his film. Spare Change was completed by a friend, producer and singer-songwriter Laurie Gordon, assisted by a team of young, devoted animators.
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How People Got Fire
Episode 1 - 6-01-2009
This introspective short animation takes place In the village of Carcross, in the Tagish First Nation. Neighbourhood pillar Grandma Kay tell the local children the tale of how Crow brought fire to people. As the story unfolds, we also meet 12-year-old Tish, an introspective, talented girl who feels drawn to the elder. Here, past and present blend, myth and reality meet, and the metaphor of fire infuses all in a location that lies at the heart of this Native community’s spiritual and cultural memory.
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