SF Indie Fest: Munch on This

The ass-kicking is kicked off by "The Oak Dresser," by Andrew Kennedy, a stop-motion feature about a wooden doll being chased by some blobby clay shapes who want to steal her acorns. It's very very pretty, and highly symbolic of ... well, of something. There's no missing that this is a metaphor bonanza. Hard to believe it was an art school project!

Following that is the extremely slick "Robota Trailer III," which is -- we s**t you not -- a commercial for a collaborative project between Doug Chaing (the guy who designed the battle droids in the Star Wars prequels) and intolerant bigot Orson Scott Card. We'll sure it'll make a very nice coffee table book and video game when it's done. Like most commercials, it's not really about anything -- some robots fighting purposelessly in a forest -- and there's really no reason to get emotionally invested in it. When "Robota Trailer III" started, it drew gasps from the audience with its stunning visuals...but when it ended, and it was revealed that the piece was hawking a book and a game, the woman sitting behind us moaned, "I feel so used." You can watch it online here, if you're into that sort of thing.

Next: "Conform or Die," by Rob Perri. It's a hastily-assembled spoof of commercials for toys. This incisive satire makes suggestions such as that the catch-phrase "freedom isn't free" is kind of stupid. Wow, really? How insightful. Rob was present and spoke shyly to the audience after the showing. He actually comes off as a pretty sweet-natured, humble guy; next, he's working on a documentary involving Keith Hernandez and male identity and pr0n, which already sounds more engaging than "Conform or Die."

The next two pieces were both a minute each, and created as quick music-videoish segments for The Residents. "Margaret Freeman" was described by its creator, Niffer Desmond, as "let's make some stuff out of garbage and move it around," which is about right. A flowing stop-motioned trash-heap that suggests a crazy lady in a creepy house where dishes get washed inside of a rib cage. Um, okay. "It goes with the lyrics that you can't understand," Niffer pointed out. It's companion piece, "The Talk of Creatures" by Bulk Foodveyor, is similarly insane -- weird composited images and shapes, exaggerated human/machine forms, and rather sillier than "Margaret Freeman." It features an ass-machine, which we absolutely loved. It was in our dreams that night.

Next up: "Elegy," a melancholy CG character piece about an old marionettist (marionetteer? marionetter?). Evoking a similar wistful sadness as Oury Atlan's "OverTime," Nadine Takvorian created it as a class project at the Emeryville College for Digital Arts. Yay Nadine.

Next: our very favorite piece, "Petunia," by Aaron Hughes. Simple, short, lovely -- ahhhh, perfect. Even if the rest of the compilation sucked (and it didn't), it would've been worth seeing just for "Petunia." Well, maybe not quite. But close. The audience absolutely ate it up, laughing and clapping the whole way through.

We're not sure what to make of "Nelson: Rock'n'Roll Detectives." We never quite got "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," which is the aesthetic sense that Jay Barba and Brian Farrelly seem to be channeling for "Nelson." A bunch of amateurly-scrawled, barely animated cutouts wiggle around and make oh-so-ironic cultural references that are half-funny and half-funny-because-they're-so-unfunny. The audience applause at the conclusion of "Nelson" was somewhat reluctant, but we think you'll have a fine time if you just go with it, baby. The George Clinton versus Boston idea is kind of funny, not terribly meaningful, and rather hip, so we're sure the young people will like it.

Next: "Shlitz'n'Giggles," (scroll down to find the streaming video link) which is clearly the work of an auteur so creative, so innovative, and so artistically motivated that nobody may ever be able to figure out what the heck is going on. Joshua Pritzker employs rubbery CG bodies and monstrous hand-drawn heads that are grotesquely fascinating. The plot centers around a paperboy who longs to star in "Beer: The Musical," but you'll barely notice the story -- you'll be too distracted by the spastic, obscene characters and manic songs. Yeah, songs -- it's a musical, with intermittant sing-along lyric subtitles, our favorite of which was an operatic "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeee ... yotch." We've got the California Institute of the Arts to thank for this, and possibly dementia.

Next: "Fred's Box," from "Petunia" artist Aaron Hughes. It's a simple, dialogueless, hand-drawn story about a gangly weirdo whose life suddenly turns really bizarre after he gets an anonymous letter inviting him to a mysterious website. Mirrors start showing him the back of his head; his paintings turn upside down; a woman folds and becomes a spider of ladylegs. None of this makes much sense to Fred, and it doesn't make much sense to us, either.

"Beginning Middle and End" brings us an artsy, psychedellic progression of inexplicable images decaying beautifully into each other. So, thanks for that.

We were nearly brought to tears by Brad Peyton's "A Tale of Bad Luck," then felt awfully silly about it. It's an oddly evocative, authentic spoofing of silent films, enacted by a stop-motion teddy bear searching for a doll whom he loves. It's utterly gorgeous, and the orchestration is incredible -- it's clear that a ton of work went into making this short. That's why it's so completely galling that ONE OF THE TITLE CARDS SAYS "IT'S" WHEN IT SHOULD SAY "ITS." Holy crap. We nearly did a spit-take when we saw that. Otherwise, a very fine production.

The evening concluded with "The Doll," by Jeremiah Costello, the screening of which was akin to torture. The screener DVD was apparantly damaged, causing the movie to skip and lag -- the audio gradually pulled ahead of the video until we were listening to whole scenes that the picture hadn't yet reached. Eventually, the picture froze altogether and the IndieFest people shut it off to rapturous audience applause. But you know what? We suspect that this film's technical problems may have saved it. As it is now, folks will have unpleasant memories of "The Doll" due to its glitchy video; but if the video had been clear, folks might've had even more unpleasant memories, due to what appeared to be a truly awful production. Some kind of marionette story about an escaped anatomically correct robot ... which could be cool, since we're all about so-bad-it's-good ... but not cool enough to be 22-minutes long. The pacing seemed incredibly slow, what dialogue we were able to catch was tedious and uninspired, and the production design was pretty much nonexistant. "The Doll" should thank its lucky stars that we weren't able to make out how truly awful it probably is. You can watch the trailer for yourself if you want.

So there you have it -- a pretty sound collection there. An eclectic group of animations by some mostly-talented folks, all of which are short enough (the animations, not the folks) to hold your attention. Plenty of locals' work gets showcased, too, and of course we're all about that. Yay cartoons, yay stop motion, yay CG. Boo tedious glitchy puppets.