MIAF - Late Night Bizarre

My last session, and always an interesting one at MIAF, Late Night Bizarre.

Firstly there were no repeat screening which was great (in some years films made it into two screenings although this may be due to last minute cancellations) although definitely some of the other films I’ve seen this year would also qualify for this category!

Firstly, the really weird, Condensed Light, a retrospective film from the UK, a nice looking Nior animation with lashings of bug-sex and inappropriate touching. Python in wonderland was also weird but wonderful, exploring the weird sexual fantasy of a boxer who is knocked out in the ring, pretty funny. The Dance of Death was another exceedingly bizarre one, obviously commenting on cosmetic surgery and vanity/body image, but it was particularly random with monsters and machines and dancing. I particularly liked the dancing-skeletal-lady at the beginning, I just really liked that part for some reason. Green Money Weed Connection: Got Milk? Also gets a mention because it was simple but still funny. Dukes of Broxstonia again featured this year, and I love them, just silly cute fun, you can watch the full show and episodes on ABC 3.

My two favourites from the session are quite different, I liked About a Cat by Daan Cools and also Serenade by Lee Han Bit. About a Cat is a simple, narrated story about a naughty sociopath cat, animated in a very innocent child’s TV program way, including the style of narration. It’s cute but nasty and funny at the same time. Serenade goes under the bizarre label rather than the humour one, but I really enjoyed the animation style and the monstrous humanoid characters. But films seem to be pretty underground and hence I can’t find much on them over the internet, but worth seeing if you can seek them out!

That’s all folks! Until next year! There will, of course, be other reviews and comments on other things in the meantime!

MIAF - Supinfocom is back!

On tonight’s menu at MIAF was International Program #8: Supinfocom is back!

I loved this whole set of films I thought they were all fantastic. Supinfocom has churned out a number of films I’ve loved over the years, and the selection of them on Premium Films is great, I think you could watch all on that list and not be disappointed! However I’ll touch briefly on the ones I liked just a little more than the rest! Slim time was a cute little film, to me a little about the futility of body-image. I really loved Split, I quite like graphic orientated films, watching patterns and growth, this was like a chaos virus in a system of innocent drone domininos. I also really liked the effects of depth of field and camera inference/grain throughout.

Alexsandr was another cute film, cute little story and nicely done, with a little twist at the end. 8 bits was a really enjoyable film mixing high quality 3D rendering with old style 8-bit gaming style animation to illustrate the story of a game and the experience of gaming.

Hezarfen was a great and humorous story of the domino effect of catastrophe. It’s raining sheep! Botanica Liberta was also pretty amusing as three bizarre plants escape from their greenhouse. I particularly liked the venus-fly-trap-on-alien-steriods. Some of the students were definitely having a lot of fun with gore, violence and associated liquid effects. Telegraphics was also great, because I loved the mocumentary style and also the simulation of old footage was really clever.

My two favourites (I just couldn’t choose between them!) were Meet Buck and Hambuster. Meet Buck was a great film, perhaps not a pretty new concept of storyline but it was done really well. I loved the older-style animation aesthetic and the humour really brought it all together, it had me in stitches. In particular I liked the transition into the character viewpoints that showed the character’s view on the situation, it was a really good screen play. Hambuster was just fun, great 3D graphics and a LOT of gore, like a zombie hamburger apocalypse. The referencing of some pop-culture or perhaps just zombie movie culture was also notable. I personally loved the extreme animated gore. Fluid effects to die for, literally.

After that mouth-watering lot, I went and had dinner at Arcadia in Ascot Vale, which was pretty tasty! I’ll have one last session for you tomorrow and then I’ll attempt to review any films I watch at MIFF!

MIAF - Long Shorts

The second screening in my MIAF evening was the International Program #7: Long Shorts. Long Shorts is always one of my favourite screenings as you just get a little more meat!

I liked all the films, so I’ll touch on them all briefly. I did however have 3 clear favourites that is was almost impossible to choose a most favourite favourite between! Firstly however, Zbigniev’s Cupboard was visually beautiful, with some fantastic sets and puppetry, but I just didn’t find the story grabbing me as much as I wanted it too. I also felt like I was missing something with Last Night’s Rain, I think I would have got a lot more out of it if I was more familiar with the classic tale and perhaps the folklore behind it. Babel was also a really interesting collage animation of pieces of film, looking at the struggle in china between old and new, country and city, progress and tradition, but I felt like there could have been more to it somehow?

So, my first favourite is Journey to Cape Verde by Jose Miguel Ribeiro. I loved the mixture of photos of the real journal illustrations, the animation of these illustrations and the ultra-minimal-but-colourful animation of the journey. It was really engaging, humorous at times and generally a joy to watch.

My second favourite is Love Patate (Love Potato, and yes, it’s getting weirder!) by Gilles Cuvelier. Not only is the story a bit bizarre (love it) it’s also a beautiful and skilful composition of traditional drawn animation, 3D animation and real film. I like what happens when you scorn the love of your potato!

Finally, my favourite favourite! So naturally, it’s whacky, weird, a little bit wrong, and utterly hilarious. The External World by David O’Reilly. Basically it is a compilation of lightly interwoven stories, in a pretty messed-up world… not so different to our own… You could read into it with all sorts of commentary on society today, our disintegrating moral fibre and desensitisation to violence… or you can just sit and enjoy it’s randomness. It’s a hit with me anyway.

Until tomorrow folks!