Shaun Clark and Kim Noce at Mew Lab made The Magic Fish for broadcast on a BBC television show for children. It’s an Italian folk tale about a couple who have very little but get some assistance from an ancient chestnut tree and a magic fish. The animation is full of mixed media painting, paper, and photographs. My favorite part is the ocean with the little boat near the end.
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Animation: Umbrella
Philip Vose made Umbrella in three months as a fourth year film at Cal Arts in 2008. It’s about a magic umbrella that pulls people right up out of the muck and into a colorful world in the sky. They could use this umbrella down in the Gulf of Mexico right about now.
Animation: Lucia
Lucia was made in Chile by Niles Atallah, Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León. It’s made from a series of still photographs. I have no idea what is going on but it sure is scary. Some kind of childhood nightmare or haunting with lots of dirt and broken stuff.
Stephen Hawking on Time Travel
British physicist, Stephen Hawking has written a piece about the different possible ways to travel in time. Possible, of course, is used in the purely theoretical sense. Most of what he says is well understood by any physics 101 student, but it’s well put and somehow avoids that actual complexities of the problem. Hawking seems have made a recent career of being a children’s physics explainer. I’m not sure I like it, but it is useful if you are a fan of crappy science fiction movies.
The basic point of his article is ‘go fast.’
Film by Children: The Sword in the Stone
Children at West Lea School made this animated version of the King Arthur legend in their Quirky Pictures animation workshop. It’s a marvelous telling of the tale of how Arthur is able to pull the sword from the stone and become king. These kids have created a wonderful film that tells its story fearlessly and with great imagination. I will find many more of these animations to post here.
Horror Film: The Nightmare
Joseph Chrisitiana made this excellent low-budget short horror film. His lead actor is his young son who does a wonderful job under truly creepy and nightmarish circumstances. The film moves with the horrifying logic of a true nightmare, with one certain death situation leading illogically but believably into another. This film had me totally with it the whole way through to its brilliant ending.
Joseph Christiana, producer and founder of Christiana Productions, is a self-taught New York-based guerrilla writer/director. He has produced no-budget feature and short films which have been received enthusiastically at various film festivals, on indie film websites and on short film cable television shows.
I found this via Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film which has a review of the film.