A reel global journey

One such student is Timothy Bond from the Queensland College of Art,Griffith University Australia. Bond,who is showing his eight-and-a-half-minute animation film called Articulate,feels that conveying some of the most innately simple emotions on the big screen is a Herculean task. “It took my colleague Marianna Shek and me almost a year and a half to make this eight-and-a-half-minute long film!” And while working on the film has not exactly been easy,Bond does admit that it was a whole lot of fun for them. “One of the coolest things about making animated films is that they allow you to be whacky,no holds barred. So we drew inspiration from old musicals,from Cinderella and a whole lot of other sources like these. The underlying message is about a girl who has to choose between saving her books or the people of the town.”

The storyline for most of the 55 films that will be shown over the next four days revolves around the silent portrayal of human emotions. “The whole point about a film is that there are certain emotions that are portrayed most effectively through silence,” says Canadian filmmaker Mireh Hamet,from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema,Concordia University,Montreal,who is showcasing his film Comment se Noie und Legend (Drowning of a Legend). Hamet’s film is based on the life of musician Andre Mathieu and tells the story of a pianist who decides to hold a concert in a small village near Quebec. “The pianist,also named Mathieu in the film,builds a raft and starts to perform in the middle of the lake. Since no one turns up,he continues playing,drifts downstream and eventually drowns in the lake,” he says. The reason behind the pianist being depicted in such a sorrowful condition,according to Hamet,is that he is a symbol of the fact that even the real Andre Mathieu died in oblivion,without any recognition. On a lighter side,Hamet says that since he had to drown the piano into the lake,it wasn’t something that endeared him to a lot of people. “Just imagine what would happen if it were a piano made by Steinway and Sons!” he laughs.

The festival has its set of serious films as well as ones with tongue-in-cheek and dark humour within them. Vincent Cardona’s film Coucou-les-Nuages (Anywhere out of the World) won the second prize in the Cinefoundation Awards Category at the Cannes Film Festival last year. It deals with the story of a person who manages to go into space on his own. “Would you believe it,the idea struck me when I was watching a video on YouTube about a rocket launch,” he says.

Another interesting topic for a film would be the way a country,which is perceived as a melting pot for cultures,incorporates different shades into their own. This is precisely the theme for students Joseph Tan and Charlene Chong of the Ngee Ann Polytechnic,Chapman University,Singapore. Taking a light-sided view of their lives in a multifaceted country like Singapore,both Tan and Chong have made a film called 15000 Ways to Curse Your Mother. “Since people of various ethnic groups from across the world reside in a country like Singapore,there is a huge influx of languages,cultures and,along with it,profanity. So our film is a very light take on the fact that since there are so many languages around us in Singapore,the number of swear words literally runs into thousands!” laughs Tan. Acronym City by Leon Cheo,also from the Ngee Ann Polytechnic,Chapman University,Singapore,also highlights an interesting aspect of Singapore. “The film deals with the fact that Singaporeans use a lot of acronyms in their daily lives,which is actually a fallout of the fact that there are so many people of so many cultures residing here. While the story was easy to work around with,the funny part was getting people to name as many acronyms as they could in 30 seconds,” he laughs.