See No Evil Christmas Special

Attention Londoners, See No Evil Christmas Special Thurs 3rd Dec 7pm. Talks from FX & Mat and Studio AKA.

Gobelins: “Un tour de Manege (Merry Go Round)”

Watching Un tour de Manège (Merry Go Round) is like flipping through the pastel drawings of a child—but coming away with clean fingers. Directed by Nicolas Anthanè, Brice Chevillard, Alexis Liddell, Francoise Losito, and Mai Nguyen, this latest Gobelins short is an impressionistic tale of being lost and found, as experienced through a child’s eyes.

Saying so much by doing so little, Un tour de Manège gets it right. It’s tactile: full of tonal and shading effects, chalky, and sprinkled in baby-powder. It’s innocent: tapping into the existential dramas of childhood, and like many works from the Gobelins school, crystallizing emotions like fear and loneliness in graphical simplicity. These moments are brief, but define a coming of age for the character, and help to humanize the inherent flaw by providing an escape from reality. Liberation by imagination.

The narrative is simple, buttressed by the fundamentals of good storytelling, and follows the same three-act structure documented at the turn of the 19th century. Much is left unexplained. The audience is left to fill in the blanks, without papering over the poetic nuance.

Digital District: Portfolio

Paris-based studio Digital District hosts a sweeping collection of CG, live-action, and graphical finery.

Jesus2000

A hip short created by another crop of brilliant students at Gobelins by the names of Rémi Bastie, Jean-Baptiste Cumont, Clément Desnos, Jonathan Djob Nkondo and Nicolas Pegon. A cute idea that is carried along by energetic Flash animation, which seems to be a focus that is growing in popularity at Gobelins. Maybe we can look forward to a rise in flash animation quality for film and television in the coming years if this trend continues.

Not to mention that this is another short produced entirely at Wizz Design who helped produce another short, Flying V: Virgile, earlier this year.

Romain Seguad: Les Zarbs

Co-produced with Canal+, Chez Eddy’s Romain Segaud directs Les Zarbs, a series of 52 3-minute episodes about the surprisingly social lives of plants.

Jaques Tati

Moustache animates with paper for a whimsical Jacques Tati mini-site created by Ultranoir

Lisa

I hate Lisa, but I love this short (Thanks, Ryan!)