For many years now, we have enjoyed a secret: the pleasure of viewing the Oscar-nominated short films. Last night we viewed the 2020 crop of animated short films. The joy of a mini-festival of short films is that you can experience such a range, from pure light-hearted comedy in one moment to wistful, mysterious, or deeply moving in another. Burrow started us off with a warm smile, a charming story of a small rabbit armed with a shovel and a hand-drawn plan for its dream home, running into all sorts of unexpected neighbors also living beneath the earth. We were then jolted into the acid trip dreamscape of Genius Loci, which starts off as meditative poetry and morphs into a psychotic break. Emotionally it is unsettling, with people and recognizable elements of urban life morphing into a very subjective first-person experience of mental illness. Artistically, it may have been the most beautiful and intriguing, alternating fluidly between fully colored-in watercolor-like scenes and abstract partial sketches. Opera was one long pan down a vast pyramid, a fantastical cross between Hieronymous Bosch and Rube Goldberg, with hundreds of figures moving through bizarre rituals in different chambers of the pyramid, with some great Sisyphean battle at its base between fire and cold. If Anything Happens I Love You was a beautiful and poignant story without words, in which we are shown the rift between a husband and wife, the two fleshed out characters avoiding each other in silent tension while shadow figures above them express emotions and flickers of memories. As the shape of the hole in their hearts is slowly revealed, it does not just tug at our heartstrings, but shoots our heart like a bullet. Mercifully this was followed by another light-hearted entry, Yes-People, in which vividly humorous claymation-style people inhabiting the same apartment building go through their day saying only “yes” (or its Icelandic equivalent) with various amusing expressions and intonations. The presentation also included three films that had been short-listed but didn’t get nominated. Kapaemahu enacts the legend of four “mahu” (third-gender persons) who came from Tahiti to Hawaii in ancient times and were great healers, ultimately transferring their healing powers to four great rocks before disappearing. The animation is beautifully done in warm tones and the figures reminiscent of cave pictograms, and the story behind it is fascinating. The actual rocks can be seen in Waikiki, and the legend is a documented oral tradition that is narrated in this film in the Niihau dialect of Hawaiian (the only continuously spoken form of Hawaiian and probably closest to what would have been spoken in the time of the healers). The Snail and The Whale is an animated version of a children’s book, a lovely story narrated in verse by Diana Rigg, with character voices by Sally Hawkins and Rob Brydon, with delightful seascape imagery, like a shorter version of Finding Nemo. Finally, To: Gerard is another charming story, this one about a would-be magician working in a mail room, his childhood inspiration for magic tricks, and how he passes on the legacy.
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