Seven short films, ranging in length from four to twenty five minutes, which have no common theme except their Canadian origins and a desire to play around with form and content. A mix of fiction, documentary and animation.
Voices of Kidnapping shows the sights and sounds of the Colombian jungle, with the superimposed voices (with subtitles) of excerpts from real life radio broadcasts. They were the voices of people sending messages to members of their families who had been kidnapped and held by the FARC guerrilla group. Some had been held for fifteen years, and these heartbreaking communications were the only possible means of contact. Sobering.
Milk is a fly-on-the-wall-style look at events in the life of a young dairy farmer, contrasting the way her pregnancy is handled with that of the cows. A bit bleak, but informative if you've ever wanted to know what noise a cow makes when it's giving birth, or hear the sound of cowshit hitting concrete.
Loretta's Flowers follows a beautiful young woman cycling through Toronto, meeting a stranger, a friend and a lover, but never managing to connect with any of them. Beautifully filmed and acted, it's a nice look at the way we have such difficulty saying the things we mean, communicating real emotion. Lovely ending too.
Embraced (Entreintes) is a brief, and word-free, monochrome animation about loneliness and love. Drawn in a very simple but effective style, the characters emote a tragic yearning for human bonding.
Three Thousand uses archive footage and animation to comment on the last hundred years of the history of the indigenous people of northern Canada, and the threats to their quality of life.
Memory of the Peace is also about the challenges First Nation people continue to face in Canada, this time taking the form of interviews with individuals threatened by a planned flooding of the Peace Valley, an important site of great historical significance. It's a moving insight into a culture that is constantly at risk.
RgBebop/Anthropology is a 4 minute abstract animation set to deconstructed jazz pieces. An oddity, but fun.
While all the films had some interesting features my top picks Voices of Kidnapping for the simple way it touches our humanity, and Loretta's Flowers for the way it frames the miscommunication in our lives.
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