By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)
The National Film Board of Canada has been very busy lately. Not only did they have works featured at the Vancouver Film Festival but also they’re following up with Animez-vous (Get Animated 2020)!
Today is International Animation Day, and this company is releasing their 12 best pieces online! Some old favourites–The Cannonball Woman, The Physics of Sorrow and Blind Vaysha–are in this collection, and afterwards, they will have one work, Old Dog, shown during Spark Animation Festival.
This charming short about an elderly pug by Ann Marie Fleming shows how taking care of one another is not a chore. The canine’s master, an equally old man, deserves the love too. They know what each other is going through. More focus is on the hound instead of the old man, but any dog owner will most likely understand what this piece is about.
The emotional vignettes say it all, and it reinforces the point that dogs are truly man’s best friend. Through the many years of supporting each other, we see how together these two are, and it’s heartwarming.
— the following picks are now available online:
The Procession originally released in 2019, and this piece directed by Pascal Blanchet and Rodolphe Saint-Gelais is one part whodunit and another eulogy to the love Catherine has for her husband, Phillppe. She died in a car accident and speaks from beyond the grave about her heartbreak. Alarey Alsip gives a soft haunting narrative to the whole drama.
The colour palette is exquisite. It’s black, white and (a dull) pink. It leads us to believe someone is the culprit, and in true Quentin Tarantino style, we have an excellent soundtrack to lead us down red herrings and inadvertent paths to realize that….
