Los Angeles Festival of Movies: Animation Today

The Los Angeles Festival of Movies came to a close on Sunday. It's a festival I've heard of but hadn't attended before, which is a shame, because they always have great programming. It's just one of those fests that hasn't fit into my schedule in the past.

I'm glad to say that this year, I made it over there to catch the Animation Today program, a series of six animated shorts from various countries that give a glimpse at the exciting things happening in animation. The theater was packed, and clearly very excited to see some cool new shorts. It was a great, enthusiastic crowd, the perfect setting for a nicely curated program.

The buzziest title in the lineup was also up first: Don Hertzfeldt's Paper Trail, which premiered at Sundance and will likely be a festival mainstay for the rest of the year. I'm on the record as being a huge Hertzfeldt fan, and Paper Trail was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. It certainly lived up to my lofty expectations.

Paper Trail

While very different in form from Hertzfeldt's other work, Paper Trail has a thematic weight and gravity that you'd expect from the filmmaker. It really is a film that's worth going into blind, I think, so consider this your warning that you might want to skip down tot he next short if you want the experience of watching this one fresh.

Paper Trail traces the life of a man named Steve Richardson through the (you guessed it) paper trail he leaves behind, from early childhood scribbles to homework assignments and letters, job applications, and eventual the repetitive paperwork of corporate life. It's a dizzying array, hundreds (if not thousands) of papers flying before your eyes, lines and scratches and words and numbers being formed, signatures scribbled, a whole life signified in a truly singular way.

The film left me feeling something like despair. So much of the back half of the film is just signatures on work forms, the changing dates and slight shifts in handwriting the ways we can mark time passing. It makes adult life feel so small, Steve's existence so pitiful. I found myself wondering if I should read between the lines to find a happier story. Maybe Steve is having a rich life outside of work that simply isn't leaving a paper trail, since modern life is so much more focused on screens? One can hope. 

The last few doodles/scribbles are especially provocative, and left me with a lot to ponder and discuss with my husband. As someone who fears/dreads aging and death, this one hit me hard. I'm still reeling from it.

Next up was Une Fugue from Agnès Patron. This one sadly didn't connect with me, despite the animation being very lovely. It follows a woman into the realm of memory, as she reflects on her childhood and her brother, who is presumably dead. She remembers waking him in the middle of the night, and venturing into the woods together. The connection between them, the power of that sibling bond even in the midst of a dark and mysterious forest.

Une Fugue

I unfortunately found myself a bit bored during Une Fugue. At 15 minutes long, it was one of the longest shorts in the program, and there wasn't enough going on for it to hold my interest. It felt very meandering, which I guess isn't the worst sin for a film about wandering in the woods to commit.

The third short was Liang-Hsin Huang's Lethe, which feels like it's operating on a somewhat similar vibe as Une Fugue, but fares a bit better. It follows a sculptor suffering from Alzheimer's after his death -- as he journeys on the mythological river Lethe (the river of forgetting in Greek mythology), he experiences memories of his life. 

I really liked the look of this one. It has a very calming aesthetic, capturing the feel of what you might wish for in the moment of death: a softness, a brightness, a dreaminess. There are also come really cool, dynamic movements within the spaces, such as the round-and-round journey through the rooms with shifting, breaking sculptures. Like Une Fugue, Lethe has an overall dreamlike quality that makes it a bit hard to pin down, but it has a stronger sense of narrative and a more economical approach to its storytelling, which I appreciated.

Another highlight of the program was The Gnawer of Bones (Mangittatuarjuk) from Louise Flaherty. Frequent readers of this blog will know that I love me some stop-motion animation, and the animation employed here is absolutely gorgeous. The characters are so detailed, and have black voids for eyes that are evocative and little scary, and feel like such a smart choice for a story like this.

The Gnawer of Rocks (Mangittatuarjuk)

Based on Flaherty's children book Mangittatuarjuk, which is itself based on a traditional Inuit legend, the film follows two young women who are drawn into a cave by the sight of beautiful, glistening stones. Once inside, they find themselves trapped in the lair of Mangittatuarjuk (aka the Gnawer of Rocks) who relies on those stones to lure passers-by inside.

The film has an incredible sense of scale. Both the cave and the monstrous woman who dwells there are imposing and impressive. And the way the story unfolds is thrilling, scary, and exciting, all the way to the enjoyable dark final twist. The artistry on display here is masterful. I expect (and hope) this one will find a lot of success as it continues playing at festivals.

The fest's penultimate short was Wei Keong Tan's More Than Happy. Tan was the only filmmaker in attendance, and did a quick casual Q&A after, where he talked about being inspired to make his film while thinking about the discussion around queer rights in Singapore. Which like, work. That sounds great. The film is a little more abstract and hard to parse, to the point where I wish I had some of that context going in.

More Than Happy

It's comprised mostly of conversations between two queer couples, which sort of melt together into a single dialogue that jumps freely between them. Obviously, this is more about content and theme than character, but it was maybe a bit too disorienting for such a short film (7 minutes long). There's some beautiful natural/space imagery, and the direct-to-camera style for the characters feels appropriately direct, even confrontational, but I like what this one was going for more than what it actually delivered. 

Animation Today ended on a real high note with Acid City, from Jack Wedge and Will Freudenheim. When I tell you I need a feature-length version of this, I mean it.

Using audio from real interviews conducted with various people in NYC, the film is a documentary about a fictional city that floats in the middle of a vast, acidic ocean. The buildings are ramshackle, falling apart. Water is a closely guarded resource, controlled by the mafia. And the citizens are colorful, both literally and figuratively, a wild-looking bunch full of candid quips about the city they call home.

Acid City

I love when movies have this kind of aesthetic, a run-down, rough-and-tumble CG look that sometimes feels like a video game that's bugging out. There's something so punk about it, raw and cool. And it's such a perfect fit for the vibe here. It's weird how this movie is presenting a dystopian cityscape that made me feel nostalgic, like it's a place I probably wouldn't want to visit, but one that I feel like I miss. Anything can be beautiful when you look at it the right way, from the right angle, through the right lens.

Now that I've tasted the fruit of LAFOM's Animation Today program (this was the second year they've had this section), I expect to be a regular fixture there in the years to come. Kudos to the fest and the programmers for putting together such a strong, diverse show on a lovely April afternoon.