Short of the Week

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Fantasy Josh Swallow

Please

A lion helps a little boy build a better boat and get back home.

Play
Fantasy Josh Swallow

Please

A lion helps a little boy build a better boat and get back home.
Play
Fantasy Przemyslaw Adamski & Katarzyna Kijek

Slow Light

A boy who was born blind, suddenly at the age of seven sees a light. A medical examination reveals that his eyes are so dense that it takes seven years for the light to reach the retina and hence for the image to reach his consciousness.

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Please

Fantasy about Nature in Animation
Directed By Josh Swallow
Produced By CalArts
Made In USA

Though the title, style and playfully vague synopsis may lead you to assume this is a family-friendly short, prepare for things to get weird and bloody in this absurd fable centred around a lost child and the friendly giant lion looking to help him. Taking elements of classic Children’s literature (I saw echoes of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & The Chronicles of Narnia in its story) and remixing them into a spirited 6-minute short, Josh Swallow’s fourth year CalArts film Please showcases some great comic-timing and a flair for storytelling.

Whilst the dark fairytale approach may not exactly be a new angle for the animated short (you only need to be familiar with the twice-featured work of Joe Bichard on S/W to have seen it before), Swallow infuses his film with just the right amount of ingenuity to make it feel fresh but familiar. With a youthful cut-out styled aesthetic reminiscent of illustrator/writer Eric Carle and a narrative readily open to interpretation, it was be easy to write-off Please as nothing more than frivolous fun, but really sink your teeth into this bite-sized short and it feels there’s plenty of meat below the surface.

Please is one of a plethora of shorts from students of the Character Animation Program at CalArts (School of Film/Video) recently released on Vimeo (see all the films here), with my other personal favourites including Alex Avagimian’s S T E P S, Alex Ishida’s Cycle, Aram Sarkisian’s – WINSTON and Xiya Lan’s I think I love you.

Filmmaker's Vimeo
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Documentary Andree Ljutica

Seven Hundred Fifty-Six

On her 756th day of parole, Leah attacks her routines with the ferocity of someone eager to catch up on twenty-two years of lost time, while also finding the energy to give back to a community of domestic violence survivors in Brooklyn.