The Animation Show

Produced exclusively for the first year of the Animation Show, this "trilogy" of shorts was animated, photographed, and completed in nine months (Oct 2002 to June 2003), during the off-hours of work on Hertzfeldt's new film, which was at the time three years into production.

After a stingy man eats some cherry seeds, a cherry tree grows on his head. A modern interpretation of the traditional Japanese Rakugo story, "Atama-yama", set in contemporary Tokyo. The director comments... "Through the nonsense Japanese old comic story Atama-yama, I wanted to express a mixed theme - a connection between one's identity and the public, and an everlasting idea such as the wonder of world being. This work is a completely independent project and took six years from planning to finish."

BROTHER - The childhood memory of a brother, his cigarette butts, asthma and head lice. UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER, (THE TRILOGY) have all screened at over 300 festivals throughout the world and have won over fifty awards, including 4 Australian Film Institute Awards (Oz Oscars), 3 Aspen Shortfest Awards, 2 Dendy Awards amongst others and these are not only in the animation category, but also for script and direction. Adam has become one of Australia's most celebrated filmmakers, his short film trilogy, Uncle, Cousin and Brother, is one of the countries most highly awarded and successful collection of short films. It has participated in over two hundred film festivals and has won over fifty awards. The films have won four AFI Awards from five nominations, and each has been shortlisted for Academy Award consideration. Adam's latest film HARVIE KRUMPET has also been nomiated for an academy award. For more info on HARVIE KRUMPET you can click here. To catch this short before the awards please visit our forum for a complete list of screenings near you.

A single blade of grass in an otherwise pristine parking lot sparks an escalating war of wills. The director comments... "My apartment in New York City overlooks a parking lot, and I've often wondered about what kind of character lives and works in the tiny booth on the lot. I imagined the attendant as an egotistical, territorial megalomaniac who rules his domain with an iron foot and immediately disposing of any uninvited trespasser, like a blade of grass. But, this is not your normal blade of grass as their duel of wits escalates, it becomes a Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote type of battle, with the final victory going to nature. I made the film in about two months and people enjoy its kinetic energy, good vs. evil theme, and the ending, in which nature survives over all."

Three shorts from the wild mind of Corky Quakenbush introduce us to the misguided world of Ricardo and his adventures.

Inspired by the cloning and birth of Dolly the Sheep, Moving Illustrations of Machines is a painstakingly detailed animated film. It consists of hand drawn ink artwork completed over a span of nearly four years. Describing the convergence of man and technology, it is a surreal look at a mechanical world where human eggs are genetically reprogrammed by ominous machines.

"The Ride to the Abyss"... Two riders on galloping horses disappear and reappear, alternating with other animated images moving to the same rhythm... Georges Schwizgebel has directed 15 animated films during the last three decades, while also creating theatre sets, designing murals and participating in numerous exhibitions. His films reveal a plastic universe, one that surprises us with its efficient and economical use of lines while demonstrating a real sense of animated motion - all this accompanied by surprising musical twists and turns.

A boy and his balloon.

COUSIN - The childhood remembrance of a cousin, his special arm, pet rocks and shopping trolley. UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER, (THE TRILOGY) have all screened at over 300 festivals throughout the world and have won over fifty awards, including 4 Australian Film Institute Awards (Oz Oscars), 3 Aspen Shortfest Awards, 2 Dendy Awards amongst others and these are not only in the animation category, but also for script and direction. Adam has become one of Australia's most celebrated filmmakers, his short film trilogy, Uncle, Cousin and Brother, is one of the countries most highly awarded and successful collection of short films. It has participated in over two hundred film festivals and has won over fifty awards. The films have won four AFI Awards from five nominations, and each has been shortlisted for Academy Award consideration. Adam's latest film HARVIE KRUMPET has also been nomiated for an academy award. For more info on HARVIE KRUMPET you can click here. To catch this short before the awards please visit our forum for a complete list of screenings near you.

Based on the novel by Jacek Dukaj, the Cathedral is the story of a pilgrim who arrives at the edge of the world at the end of a long journey. Here he finds the Cathedral, a place full of secrets. The Cathedral is not just a building, and the pilgrim is not just a man.

Produced exclusively for the first year of the Animation Show, this "trilogy" of shorts was animated, photographed, and completed in nine months (Oct 2002 to June 2003), during the off-hours of work on Hertzfeldt's new film, which was at the time three years into production. Shifting gears in the midst of such a difficult and relatively somber project to simultaneously animate something fun and silly again proved to be a welcome and much needed change. What was originally meant to be a very short trilogy to book-end the Show quickly ballooned into a much wilder and more experimental set of cartoons totalling eight minutes. Collectively, the three films are actually among Bitter Films' most expensive productions, due in large part to the multitude of special effects and trial and error experimentation required in photography. In addition to several optical effects shots - a backlight process developed for the new film but used for the first time here - there was a wealth of experimental animation: double exposures, shadow and lighting effects, stop motion hybrids, and more. The optical backlight effects (fire, lasers, etc) were all achieved traditionally and in-camera, via a process similar in theory to how the optical effects of the original 1977 Star Wars were created. As Hertzfeldt figured out how to pull more of these effects shots off, the metaphorical dam of additional ideas broke and the three pieces grew.

A dead solider wakes up to find himself with his gun, a widescreen TV, and a whole lot of time... The director comments... "My idea was to make a story where the character starts out a hero, turns into a coward and ends up a fool. It's basically a big cruel trick played on him by whoever controls the afterlife... It's nice to be able to make a movie that has a really unhappy ending, and yet people still seem to enjoy it. I know it's potentially controversial subject matter - there were complaints on Irish Radio after its run in the cinema... but at least I didn't try to tack on an upbeat ending, which I believe is a way of taking it more seriously."

UNCLE - The biography of a humble man, his lemon tree, chihuahua and crumpets. UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER, (THE TRILOGY) have all screened at over 300 festivals throughout the world and have won over fifty awards, including 4 Australian Film Institute Awards (Oz Oscars), 3 Aspen Shortfest Awards, 2 Dendy Awards amongst others and these are not only in the animation category, but also for script and direction. Adam has become one of Australia's most celebrated filmmakers, his short film trilogy, Uncle, Cousin and Brother, is one of the countries most highly awarded and successful collection of short films. It has participated in over two hundred film festivals and has won over fifty awards. The films have won four AFI Awards from five nominations, and each has been shortlisted for Academy Award consideration. Adam's latest film HARVIE KRUMPET has also been nomiated for an academy award. For more info on HARVIE KRUMPET you can click here. To catch this short before the awards please visit our forum for a complete list of screenings near you.

A collection of never-before-seen character animation and experiments 'from the archives' of Mike Judge, plus the very rare early short film, Huh? and the first Office Space animated short with Milton—later to become the inspiration for the live action feature film.

An animated short inspired by Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly. The puppet Butterfly lives alone on an island, until a white ship brings the handsome sailor Pinkerton. Their love affair grows until Pinkerton has to leave with his ship. The Butterfly gives birth and waits for her sailor to return. Years later when her prayers are answered her world is torn to pieces when he returns.

The cuckoos have taken over London and no one is safe! These Little Napoleons and Kaisers get a whimsical Metropolis-type assembly line going that will have you tapping your toes to the beat. This Vaudeville inspired tune is brought to us by “The Real Tuesday Weld’s".

The stone people have seen a lot in their everlasting lives atop their mountain, so they're only mildly amazed by the comings and goings inside the valley below. But when Mankind begins to progress and grow, this new behavior threatens the rocks' serenity.. The directors comment... Chris: "Rocks tries to elaborate on different perceptions of passing time. For example a five year old child will experience a month as being a really long time whereas an adult or elderly person experiences the same amount of time as being much shorter. Our protagonists Hew and Kew, being rocks, are living in an extremely different timespace compared to us humans. The goal was to change the perspective on human behavior, and maybe understand where we're coming from and where we might be going a little bit better by looking at it more globally... I always like to look at human nature from a different point of view, i.e. through the eyes of non-human protagonists. I think animation is the perfect media to apply this concept, which originates from an idea I came across studying social anthropology: You study foreign cultures and their differences in order to get a better understanding of your own culture and background. This approach offers a great way to understand anew what you might otherwise take as natural, because you experienced it everyday since you were born. More directly, nowadays the possibility of mankind just wiping itself out can be very disturbing, but wouldn't necesarily mean the end of the world." Heidi: "The main challenge for us was to make the two different techniques we used for our film fit togther. On one hand we had the model puppets, Hew and Kew, who we animated through traditional stop-motion. The model set they were sitting on was placed in front of a blue-screen, which on the other hand had to be replaced by a digital valley in the background and the rushing sky in postproduction. It was hard work to bring together the puppet set with the digital set exten

Produced exclusively for the first year of the Animation Show, this "trilogy" of shorts was animated, photographed, and completed in nine months (Oct 2002 to June 2003), during the off-hours of work on Hertzfeldt's new film, which was at the time three years into production.