Animation Fest 2019: Saturday Screenings

SCAD’s Annual Film Fest happened this past weekend at SCADShow in Atlanta. Admission was free for all SCAD Students, and provided a wonderful opportunity to explore the major! I attended on Saturday, September 29th, so I got the chance to see Global Shorts: Kids, SCAD Faculty Showcase, Global Shorts: The Best of Animation, and a special preview of Adult Swim’s ‘PRIMAL’. 

A mix of bright colors and styles varying from the charcoal-esque Grand Loup & Petit Loup to 3D claymation of Heatwave, the Kids’ Shorts included films created by GOBELINS, Lia Bertels, Sonja Rohleder, Martin Smatana, Fokion Xenos, Anastasia Makhlina, and Rémi Durin. 

The SCAD Faculty Showcase included shorts from our very own professors, including Davonne Dupart, Jake Zhang, Jose Silva, and associate chair of animation Matthew Maloney. Dupart’s Leetha was an exercise in toon shading combined with 2D animation, whereas Zhang’s Pokey Pokey presented a surreal world with a terrifying autocracy at its core. Then, Silva’s Sin Titulo brought the issue of female-oriented violence into the spotlight with its gray-and-white penciled animation. Finally, Maloney’s Gryphon Animo was a gorgeously rendered fantasy film. Reminiscent of a video game cutscene, the short subverted tropes and brought the audience along for the hero’s adventures through its fantastic world. 

Global Shorts: The Best of Animation featured award-winning films that originally premiered this June at the Annecy International Film Festival, the gold standard for the animation industry. From the bizarrely hilarious to the heart-wrenchingly poignant, these films included Don’t Know What, Dcera (Daughter), Deszcz, Tio Tomás (Uncle Thomas), Maestro, Mémorable, and My Generation. All of the films combined spectacular editing with groundbreaking animation techniques. My favorite from the selection was Piotr Milczarek’s Deszcz. A short about a superhero who can’t save everyone, it was the perfect combination of emotion and humour, garnering laughs and gasps from the audience as they made their way to the ending. 

The last event of the day–and the finale of this year’s AnimationFest–was a four-episode screening of “PRIMAL”, a new series by Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Samurai Jack. By far, this was my favorite event at AnimFest. Dubbed “Brutal Bambi” by the creator himself, it effortlessly combined emotional scenes with smoothly coordinated action sequences. But the most unique part of this show is that there are no words–the bonding between the protagonists, a dinosaur and caveman, occurs entirely through visual cues. The series officially premieres on Adult Swim on October 7th, so be sure to catch an episode or two, especially if you’re interested in 2D animation!