Potlems

If you are planning on traumatising your children today but are short of ideas, pop them in front of this animated short.  Potlems, written and directed by Alberto Allegri Rodríguez will bury itself deep into your offspring’s deepest consciousness and will, no doubt, be resurfaced by a well-meaning therapist in about two decades.  It’s easier than being that mum in a wood in a hood, I suppose.

Hats off to Alberto and his team at The Animation Workshop.

Potlems tells the story of Ginger, a cute little porcelain teapot being brought into the world by a very visible but very bonkers Creator.  Yet something has happened – Ginger has a glitch – he has a frown instead of a smile. And that just simply won’t do in this surreal, merry-go-round, quasi operatic world of unquestioning, frenzied, breakable happiness.  Once the Creator notices him properly, it can only mean one thing – poor Ginger needs to be fixed and returned.  There’s nothing a little celestial kintsugi can’t mend, after all.

I have to say I found this animation at once entrancing and unnerving.  It’s beautifully made, but is so layered my kind kept returning to it time and time again after the first watch - as if it had undergone some metaphorical histological sectioning that put it on replay mode while I tried to figure it out.  So, go on, plonk Junior down in front of this – it will do for them what the Singing Ringing Tree did for me in the way back when.