By Sandi Masori
SAN DIEGO – This weekend, at the Comic-Con Museum, there was a showcase of award-winning international independent animated films. The showcase was a joint project of Comic-Con International and the Independent Film Festival. Over the course of an hour, guests were treated to eight animated films that ranged in time from three to seventeen minutes. The films were selected from those that had won awards throughout the years. Organizer Adam Neese said that when they started putting together this project, they reached out to the various artists and asked if they were interested in being a part of it. The eight films we saw were from the first ones who said yes.
The shorts covered various styles of animation and themes. Most were from the US, but Malaysia, Argentina, and Germany were also represented.
The first short was from Argentina, Gorgonas, by Salvador San, from 2006. It’s about an apocalyptic former girl band that gets turned into Gorgons (like Medusa) and turns everyone to stone. The animation style reminded me of some of the older and darker Justice League videos that my kids used to watch–rhe slower paced more serious ones, not the fun Superfriends versions. It was cute, but horror and post-apocalyptic themes are not really my thing, so it wasn’t my favorite.
The next video was Fission by Kun-I Chang from New York. It won the award in 2007. This video was about a man who sees himself as graffiti on the subway wall. It was a little abstract, so also not really my thing, but what was interesting about it is that it was made from 600 illustrations using a rotoscope technique. Rotoscope is something that any self-respecting Gen X-er who knows something about A-ha’s “Take On Me” video from 1985 will recognize. The video won major acclaim and was one of early MTV’s staples.
The next short I liked much more. It was called Wolf Dog Tales by Bernadine Santistevan (from New York). It used an interesting technique of what looked like shapes in sand and sand painting to tell the story. The 2012 award winner tells some Native American tales like how the dog became domesticated, and one of my favorite fables, the one about the good wolf and bad wolf who are fighting. A boy asks his grandfather which wolf will win. “Whichever one you feed” replies the grandfather.
Next up was Summer Bummer, which was the 2013 winner and is by the most famous animator of the bunch, Bill Plympton (also from New York). He has long been a staple on the old Spike and Mike Sick and Twisted Animation Festivals. I was excited to see his name on the roster, because I have seen some of his other work before. He has a unique style that uses multiple sheets of paper to create the animation. In this video, a man imagines the horrors that could be lurking in the pool. The video was cute, but I have to say my enthusiasm about him cooled somewhat when I started looking online to see if any of the artists were Jewish. I couldn’t find evidence that any of them were, but I did find a 2015 Daily Beast interview with Plympton in which he was talking about how he had drawn a lot of cartoons against Israel (I’m guessing in 2014, when the conflict had heated up), and he received a lot of mail from very upset Jews. I couldn’t find much more info about it, or his thoughts on the current conflict, but my hackles were raised. There’s not enough current evidence to convict him, but I am giving him the side eye a bit now, so to speak.
Back to the showcase, the next video Mite, by Walter Volbers from Germany (and the 2014 winner) employed an interesting technique. The animation style was very realistic, and felt like a single camera shot. The camera goes deep deep into the carpet at a hotel, where we see the carpet mites. One of them apparently has an allergy to dust and lets out a big sneeze. It was cute.
After that was The Looking Planet by Eric Law Anderson of Sherman Oaks, California. This 2015 award winning film is a reimagining of the creation of the universe, loosely inspired by Douglas Adams Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. What was interesting about this one is that all of the dialogue was in a real native American pre-Columbian language from Brazil called Kaingang which is only spoken by about 30,000 people. I could have sworn that I heard an “oy vey” in there at one point though, but perhaps not. In this short, a young cosmos engineer breaks some rules and ends up creating the special connection between Earth and the moon. This was the longest video, clocking in at just under 17 minutes.
The next video, Wishing Box by Lizzie Zhang & Nan Li of San Francisco (2019) was my favorite. It was a really cute story about a pirate and a monkey on the high seas. The pirate has a wishing box that only works for the monkey, and the monkey keeps pulling bananas out of it. The pirate is trying to get him to wish for gold instead of food. He shows the monkey pictures of what he wants, but the monkey keeps interpreting it as food in similar shapes. Finally the pirate pulls out his gold tooth and shows it to the monkey, who then wishes for gold teeth. In the end, the boat sinks because of the weight of all the gold teeth, but not to worry, the pirate and the monkey are okay and find themselves on a raft. Then all the food the monkey had wished for pops up around them. Super super cute.
And the last film of the hour was last year’s winner, Horologist by Jared Lee from Malaysia. This video was about time, I guess. It was a little confusing to me, to be honest, but the description on the website says “Obsessed with time, Sand found a way to sell time itself. While his rich customers stay young, they never question Sand’s discovery and the source of their youth.” Honestly, I didn’t get that from watching it, but perhaps I blanked out a bit.
Most of these videos can be found online in various places if you want to see them.
After exiting the theater, you’re let out into the Stan Lee exhibit, so while there was no Jewish angle in the videos themselves, just a few feet away we have a Jewish connection. Lee, the Marvel Comics executive who created such super-heroes as Spiderman, Thor, Hulk, and the Fantastic Four, to name just a few, was a fellow Jew.
While this particular event may have been a one-time thing, keep your eye on the Comic-Con museum because I have a feeling there will be other such showcases in the future.
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Sandi Masori is a theater and restaurant reviewer for San Diego Jewish World.