Monday, May 17, 2010

Women in Art

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art
by Philip Scott Johnson
Music: Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007
performed by Yo-Yo Ma


Nominated as Most Creative Video

2nd Annual YouTube Awards

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Charlie Thistle - 2008







Charlie Thistle dreams of a better world. He dreams of a world in color, where trees grow indoors, and animals can talk... Alas, Charlie works at the Department of Normality, where change isn't tolerated. But there comes a time in everyone's life when they have to take a stand. And that day is coming for Charlie Thistle!

Awards:
  • BEST SHORT - 2009 Sedona International Film Festival
  • 3RD Place - Doorpost Film Project 2008

  • 3RD Place - 2010 Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival of Seattle

Charlie Thistle (USA)

Running time: 15m

      Director:       Bragi Schut Jr.
      Writer(s):       Bragi Schut Jr.
      Producer(s):       Kirsten Wagner, Esther Goodstein
      Director of Photography:       Paula Huidobro
   
      Cast and Credits:
      Charlie - Jon Keel
      Ezzie - Leslie Stevens
      Narrated by - David Markus

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Alma- 2009



Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

(Best view in full screen - To view the video in full screen just click the full screen symbol in the bottom right of the video player. Press esc button to come out of full screen.)

Alma, a little girl, skips through the snow covered streets of a small town. Her attention is caught by a strange doll in an antique toy shop window. Fascinated, Alma decides to enter...

'Alma' es el primer corto dirigido por Rodrigo Blaas, un animador español afincado en California que trabaja para Pixar desde el año 2002. En este tiempo, Rodrigo ha participado en películas tan importantes como 'Buscando a Nemo', Cars', 'Los Increíbles', 'Wall-e' y 'UP', pero esta es la primera vez que se enfrasca en un proyecto independiente.

El corto ha ganado numerosos premios, entre ellos a mejor corto animado en el LA Shorts Fest y en el Animacor (el Festival Internacional de Animación en España), así como el premio a la Mejor Opera Prima en I Castelli Animati de Italia.

2-nd Place - 2010 Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival of Seattle

Web oficial: almashortfilm.com


ALMA

Country:  Spain, USA
Year:      2009
Running Time: 5.5 minutes
Director: Rodrigo Blaas

Friday, May 14, 2010

Piotr Kamler - Coeur de secours(1973)

Piotr Kamler


Piotr Kamler was born in Warsaw in 1936. He is a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art. In 1959 he went to Paris to continue his art studies. it was there that he came into contact with Research Department at ORTF( directed by Pierre Schaeffer) and began to collaborate with “concrete” musicians such as Xenakis on experimental shorts( musical abstract films and “fables”). The ORTF Research Department which was later taken over by INA, was a hothouse for talent, enabling diverse artists such as Peter Foldes, Robert Lapoujade , Jacques Espagne, Jacques Rouxel, Andre Martin and Michel Boschet, Jacques Colombat, Jean-Francois Laguionie, Henry Lacam and Kamler to carry out a large number of bold and innovative personal projects.
With astonishing regularity, Kamler came up with no less than 8 unusual short films between 1962 and 1973. The films themselves were incorrectly described as science fiction-in fact they were much closer to the universe of Borges than to Space Opera. Kamler, who created strange, improbable but plausible world, began to explore a whole range of different visual techniques. Le Trou (1968), Araignelephant (1968), Delicieuse Catastrophe(1971), Coeur de secours (1973) all won awards at major film festivals (Cracow, New York, Mamaiea , Melbourne … ). After Le Pas (Grand prix at Annecy 1975) Kamler went underground for a while until he resurfaced with the full-length feature Chronopolis (1982).




(Best view in full screen - To view the video in full screen just click the full screen symbol in the bottom right of the video player. Press esc button to come out of full screen.)

Chronopolis made in 1982 by Piotr Kamler is a fabulous city lost in space where strange pharaoh-like immortals kill the monotony of their deathless state by fabricating time, represented by enigmatic, morphing white balls.







Kamler's animated cinema suggests a singular variety of science fiction; it was he who provided the original idea for the Shadoks TV series. Completely unalike to more conventionally linear and text-based narratives, Kamler's films instead explore a series of dynamic visual motifs. Typically, the conclusion of these films is less suggestive of resolution, than it is of recurring episode. What is most striking in all his films is the variety of visual invention that Kamler brings to each work - he is as assured working with clay (as in his feature, Chronopolis) as he is with ink and paper, or even animating digitally on computer (in the most recent work in this program, Une mission ephemere). These visual flourishes embellish some of the most amazing animated films ever made - an achievement which won his Le Pas the Grand Prix of the 1975 Annecy Animation Festival.

You can watch 10 min of the film here