SOUTH AFRICAN SHORTS

Alice’s Attic

Dir: Robyn Yannoukos, Dark RAY Production SA/USA 4 min
This Student Academy Award winning film has played across the globe, screening at countless prominent festivals, and winning many of them. This stop motion animation film is about a fragile character who attempts to deal with her fears in an unexpected way.

Human Nature Trilogy

Dir: Kerrin Kokot 2009 3 mins.
A trilogy of short films showing ordinary people doing ordinary things. Only…it’s not people. It’s a single item of their clothing.

Plug Out Boy

Dir: Ricky Martin, 1 min, UK 2009
Plug Out Boy is a boy on a non-power trip to Plug Out everything that shouldn’t be on…

My City

Lucid Pictures Dir: Luke Younge 2009 15 min; All Ages
An inspiring and informative short film on sustainable energy in South African cities that combines live action with traditional stop-motion animation.

Stop It

Dir: Kyle Warburg 45 sec, PG
A public service announcement aimed at creating awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving.

1. 

   Yazeed Kamaldien says:

   April 11, 2010 at 3:24 pm

   MOVING THINGS MOVE AUDIENCES
   Written by Yazeed Kamaldien
   Puppetry was not limited only to theatre stages at this year’s Out The Box Festival of Puppetry & Visual Performance but also appeared either as performance or subject in a line-up of films.
   The Moving Things Film Festival gathered stories on screen predominantly from South Africa and Latin America. These films were screened daily for the festival’s duration at the Labia cinema of Orange Street in Gardens.
   There were films for all ages; some were cheery while others carried a heavy dose of angst to question some big issues.
   A highlight for the festival’s organisers Unima SA were five short films that resulted from stop-frame animation workshops that it ran late last year. These films were made by creative industry professionals who had experimented with this medium for the first time. Fairly light-weight storytelling prevailed as the focus seemed to be more on techniques of animating paper, clay, found objects and fabric. Unima SA, the South African Association of Puppetry and Visual Performance, plans to run these short workshops again this year and information will be up on its website.
   More advanced South African stop-frame animation films also featured. ‘My City’ was a 15-minute film directed by Luke Younge and it fused live action with white chalk drawings on a school board. It was set in a classroom and informed on South Africa’s climate change challenges.
   The actor – a young high school girl – enthusiastically talked about finding solutions to the energy problems while witty chalk drawings created accessible visuals for her presentation.
   Another clever energy-related film was ‘Plug Out Boy’ by Ricky Martin – not the former pop singer – about a “non-power trip to Plug Out everything that shouldn’t be on”.
   Most of the South African short films carried social messaging. This included ‘Stop It’ which was a public service announcement “aimed at creating awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving”.
   Director Robyn Yannoukos explored darker themes with his award-winning four-minute film ‘Alice’s Attic’. It featured a “fragile character who attempts to deal with her fears in an unexpected way”. The detail and complexity of the animation was gripping and just plain grand to marvel at.
   ‘Human Nature Trilogy’ directed by Kerrin Kokot lightened up the cinema’s atmosphere though as it elicited chuckles. Kokot used clothing to tell stories of sensational suggestion and flirtation in sometimes awkward public spaces.
   The Hispano-America Shorts Collection showed films from Mexico and Spain. Mexican artists said their work was inspired by “desires, dreams, frustrations, miracles and divine beings with a dark organic aesthetic”. Metaphors and symbols on screen unpacked a compelling visual world that was complex in design and story.
   One of the gems from this short films selection was the four-minute music video ‘No Corras…