Short of the Week

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Experimental Lizzi Akana

Marvelous Keen Loony Bin

Quirky, animated film from RISD student, Lizzi Akana, takes us into a bizarre world where despondent characters lack crucial features and monkeys strut with balloon heads.

Play
Experimental Lizzi Akana

Marvelous Keen Loony Bin

Quirky, animated film from RISD student, Lizzi Akana, takes us into a bizarre world where despondent characters lack crucial features and monkeys strut with balloon heads.
Play
Drama Nina Ljeti

Divine Children

Divine Children follows a gang of kids who are trying to adapt to life in a contemporary, post-war America. When Buzz, an aspiring dancer, wishes to join the group, he is subjected to a single test — a solo walk across an active minefield.

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Horror Annalise Lockhart

Inheritance

On Norra’s 25th birthday, she and her brother inherit the deed to their family's small cabin. With this auspicious birthday, she starts seeing the spirits that have been haunting her brother and father for years.

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Marvelous Keen Loony Bin

Experimental about Society in Animation
Directed By Lizzi Akana
Produced By RISD
Made In USA

This runaway hit from Rhode Island School of Design student Lizzi Akana was produced as her senior project. Marvelous Keen Loony Bin paints a surrealistic town where something is always missing and much is to be desired. People with no faces, arms, or legs fall into hilariously unfortunate circumstances. With great comedic timing and well-placed sound effects, this film provides an amusing look at our own unsatisfactory lives.

All hand drawn, each frame was scanned, individually painted in Photoshop and then composited in After Effects. It’s clearly a student film, full of aimless exploration and small indulgences—, but this one proves it can be done well and still hold a cohesive story.

I saw MKLB for the first time at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival (in the same program as my own short animation, Push For Signal), and it was an easy favorite of mine. Learn more about Lizzi on her MySpace page.

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