Fallin’ Floyd

If you have ever been dumped, you will get this. Floyd, our hero, has saved up his hard earned cash for an engagement ring only to be rejected.

He soon discovers that although he has lost his girl, he has gained a new companion: his psychological torment manifests itself as a little demon determined to disrupt any future life he may attempt to make for himself. Whether he escapes this fate, you will have to watch this very beautifully made animated short written and directed by Albert 't Hooft and Paco Vink of Ducth animated production company il Luster.

If you live in the Netherlands, you can help kickstart their next project, Trippel Trappel, here.

Life is Beautiful

Life for Anton has been marred by a thousand little cruelties dealt to him because of his tiny stature.  He calmly decides to end it all, he is done with life. Yet as you will see, life is not done with Anton.  The subject matter is such that this could have gone very wrong but Life is Beautiful is quite delightful – especially when you get to the end. This wonderful animated short was directed by Ben Brand and made with support of the Dutch Film Fund and the NTR.

Goodbye Mister De Vries

Mr De Vries is old – terribly old and he sits alone in his house awaiting his inevitable departure from this world. Yet one morning a mysterious package arrives and he realises that there is one more thing he must do before he leaves.  This very touching animated short was directed by Mascha Halberstad and won the international short and animation film award at the Schlingel Film Festival in Germany.

In A Forest

This is a very clever three minute animated short with an unexpected twist.  Directed by Fons Schiedon and produced by Submarine, it opens with an exciting pursuit through a forest that ends in... not a forest.

A film about believing in an illusion, In A Forest is part of an initiative by the Dutch government to reintroduce short films in to cinemas.  If this is anything to go by, they are on to something!

The Giant Slugs of Angers

Angers is a beautiful and historic city 300km south west of Paris. Its universities and museums help to offer its citizens a rich cultural life which spans many centuries but remains vibrantly contemporary. Yet even the cultivated Angevins may not have been prepared for an invasion of giant slugs, the latest work by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman.

Hofman is renowned for his giant installations – we featured his big yellow rabbit in the Swedish town of Örebro last year. For Angers' recent Hanging Hearts Festival, Hofman created a pair of giant, dazzlingly multi-colored slugs.

100 (5050 years in 150 seconds)

If you add up the ages of all the people in this short film then you will get the grand total of 5050 years. That’s quite something and it must have taken some tenacity and patience to create this on the part of filmmaker Jeroen Wolf. To begin with there are the issues around shooting the very young and the very old, the first group because of modern taboos the second because of their frailty (not to mention their scarcity).

The project involved asking members of the public to simply state their age to the camera. It is fascinating to watch the years roll by so quickly – this really is the journey of a lifetime – or one hundred of them perhaps. I can only imagine how frustrating it might have been at times. How old are you? Forty seven? Ah, I have that already – thanks anyway!

All told it took Jeroen four months to get all the ages together in one film. It’s interesting to hear the numbers from one to a hundred in Dutch too – the similarities between that and English can be noted very easily at times.

Now You Know It Anyway

A small girl with a very large imagination writes and draws her own story. This budding author, realizing perhaps the financial potential of her work, goes to the local flea market and sets up shop.  She seems quite surprised when a man and his young child take an interest in her stories and as she recounts one to them all of the creatures in the story come alive and start listening.

This is a wonderful short by Polder Animations and it is not surprising that in its native Netherlands it did the rounds with The Smurfs in all Pathe Cinemas in the country as part of the Ultrakort 2 initiative by The Netherlands Film Fund and Pathe.

I imagine there were many small people who went home thinking that this was the better movie of the two (not to mention almost all of the adults!).

By the way, if the style of this animation seems to be familiar, it could be because we featured Polder Animation's superb Blik on Kuriositas a while ago.

Consurgo

A little girl plays with her ball in the street which goes in to the road. Her father goes after the ball to retrieve it for his little girl – with disastrous consequences.  What happens after that? Well, it wouldn’t be much of a story if he dies, really would it? Something wonderful is about to happen (with apologies to Dave Bowman for paraphrasing there!).

And something wonderful does indeed happen – and you can add the words bizarre, strange, outlandish and any number of other adjectives in to the mix. This steampunk style animation isn’t quite beyond description, but you really should see Resurgo (which means to arise in latin) to believe it!  It is the work of several ex students from the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands - Tom Hankins, Rene Hoekstra and Gijs van Kooten.

Together these exciting young animators make up Colorbleed, a  small, fresh 3d animation and VFX studio, based in Holland. Their specialties range from character animation, visual effects, technical and creative direction. They have already done some impressive TV work and are always on the lookout for new challenges – one of their major goals is to work with some big producers (so hey, Mr or Ms Executive, if you are reading this get over to their website before someone else snaps them up!).

You may think that you haven’t heard of Colorbleed before. Well, take a look at another of their shorts, Mac 'n' Cheese which you may well have seen as it went well and truly viral a few months ago!

Hard Boiled Chicken

Once upon a time there was a chicken who really, really wanted to keep the eggs that she laid and raise a family. 

Unfortunately, the farmer has other ideas.  So, she enlists the help of the local rooster who is (one can only assume) the father of her unborn chick.

How he goes about retrieving the errant egg forms the basis of this wonderfully made (and often quite knowing animation), created for S4C by Dutch based art house Animation Works. 

This is a simple tale but quite modern at the same time.  Enjoy!