Reviews

Review: The best of the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival

Canadian animations

By PEG ALOI | January 24, 2012

3.0 Stars

The Canadians produce the best animation programs and prove it again with this international selection. The highlights include Québécois Frédérick Tremblay's White Strawberries — imagine the bunnies from David Lynch's Inland Empire cast in a gothic apocalypse made of grey papier maché. From Japan, Japanese animator Atsushi Wada's The Mechanism of Spring is a watercolor fantasy of obese boys observing the cruel transformations of nature. Welshman Ben Cady's The Goat and the Well is a funny, dark parable of animal husbandry, while American Jason Carpenter's The Renter conjures a haunting memoir of rural daycare in pale paint. Eamonn O'Neill's I'm Fine, Thanks is a candy-colored psychotic meditation on urban survival. The finest piece in the program is Pjotr Sapegin's The Last Norwegian Troll, a claymation spectacle narrated by Max von Sydow.

Topics: Reviews , claymation, David Lynch, Institute of Contemporary Art, More

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