Dan's Papers - October 10, 2008

For people who still consider cartoons a children's medium, I have two words. South Park. The Simpsons, The Triplettes of Belleville.

Okay, that was more than two. The variety of style in animation is in many ways much more exciting than what live action film has to offer. The sky is the limit when it comes to characters and what they can be made to do.

Kids cartoons have come a long way from Rocky and Bullwinkle and Popeye (although both were brilliant). So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the three short films I screened from the Hamptons International Film Festival's Children's Shorts program tended toward sophisticated animation for adults rather than the mindless Saturday cartoons we all grew up on (and, as my neurotic friends and I like to add, "and look how we turned out").

But despite the ingenious animation of two of the films and their great appeal to grown-ups, our five-year-old son went crazy for all of them. So we're all excited to see the full program of eight shorts.

One of the three was the clear winner for our son: a black and white Flash animation that is probably the history of American/European civilizations in 4 minutes, called Last Time in Clerkenwell by Alex Budovsky, a Russian born artist who lives in New York (website: figlimigliproductions.com). The visuals, almost cut outs, are completely engaging. The music, a jazzy scat tune by a member of the band, The Real Tuesday Weld, is absolutely infectious. Our son asked to watch it again and again (which didn't even bother me) and woke me up the next morning singing the tune. It is hilarious.

The second favorite of the three was Papiroflexia (Spanish for origami) by Joaquin Baldwin, a young animator and web designer from Paraguay (pixelnitrate.com), with a lovely score by Nick Fevola, played by nine real musicians! It's a beautiful film in every way, as the lead character folds his surroundings and himself out of urban ugliness into natural splendor.

The last short we watched was Academania, a 7-minute live action film by Gina Guerrieri. A curmudgeon-ish old professor is given a gift of yellow socks by a secret admirer. He reluctantly puts them on and everything in his life changes. This skews more toward junior high kids and older, but our son got it and loved it. None of these films have dialogue, making them easy to take in for kids of any age, and totally engaging and enjoyable.

HIFF's Children's Shorts program, which is 120 minutes long, is on Sat., Oct. 18 at noon in Southampton, and Sun., Oct. 19 at 1:00 in Montauk. For more information, go to www.hamptonsfilmfest.org.