Margot Douglas joins the Femme Filmmakers Festival fray to chime on four of the short films featured in this year’s Competition Selection.
Home (Anita Bruvere)
How many people have called the same place home? This is one of the questions raised in Anita Bruvere’s stop motion animation Home, which delicately presents the true story of one East London building that has housed immigrants from all over the world for centuries.
Fabric is woven on looms, with bobbins, sewing machines and flows across the screen illustrating the passing of time and the events unfolding as a timeline of residents is played out in front of us. The people, these characters trying desperately to call somewhere home, are crafted from transparent material symbolising the fragility of their lives.
Each story intercut with devastating newspaper articles from the time, showing a public distrust and disgust of their being. Bruvere’s background in fine arts is apparent in the beautiful craftsmanship and detail in the animation. And Anna Bauers subtle yet effective score is poignant, enchanting the bustling sound design by Breen Turner.
Girl In The Hallway (Valerie Barnhart)
“It’s amazing what you can do with an internet connection and a library card” says director and animator Valerie Barnhart about her initial lack of experience with animation before making Girl In The Hallway. And it is amazing.
A true crime animated documentary, spanning just over 10 minutes, Girl In The Hallway tells the story of Xiana Fairchild, a missing and then murdered indigenous child. Our raconteur is Jamie DeWolf, who passionately recounts his interactions with Fairchild and the unfolding disaster with lyrical cadence in a live performance for Snap Judgement, a storytelling podcast by NPR.
The choice to use a live performance is unusual, but totally captivating here. Barnhart’s animation is dark, messy and rough but emotive and haunting with it. Made of a mix of mediums including charcoal, graphite and pastel on paper. It’s beautiful to watch, flowing effortlessly with DeWolf’s voice, with a surprise of alternative techniques throughout. Barnhart says that she often has to repeat to people that she learned how to animate by herself with this project, which is understandable given the creativity and skill present in the film.
Find Me Mother / Maa Tuki (Suchana Saha)
Visually simplistic animation allows room for the complex, emotional story of Maa Tuki. A young woman takes care of her sick mother in hospital and reminisces about a lifetime of her mother taking care of her.
The hand drawn animation flows effortlessly from the stark whites and blues of the hospital room to the joyful rainbow of a childhood in India. Similarly Shereen Ghosh’s score lifts us in the happy moments and delicately frames the sad. Maa Tuki translates to “find me, mother” in English and acts as the only dialogue we hear, getting increasingly loaded with meaning the longer we watch.
For Suchana Saha, who wrote, directed and animated the film whilst studying at Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, it’s clearly a personal story, however this never isolates the audience. We are able to connect with the characters as they transform in front of our eyes, revealing their past, present and possible future.
The Gray Area (Kelsie Moore)
Kelsie Moore’s The Gray Area is a sympathetic portrait of a family who have fallen into an economic gray area; they’re too poor to get by, but not poor enough to get help. Living in a camper purchased with a tax refund, in the middle of the desert near the city of St. George, mother Cory calmly shows us how her, partner Skip, and son Seren are experiencing homelessness.
“I’m just trying to survive” she says. Shot and directed by Moore, the film manages to not fall into the trap of exploiting it’s subject. But instead feels like an intimate journey that the audience is invited to go on with the filmmaker.
The cinematography is beautiful but never showy, enhanced by the desert scenery, and the family are all able to speak honestly and without fear. A subtle but poignant score by Brian Casey Lee magnifies the emotional impact of the film, and we are left with a glimmer of hope. Not because of where they are at the end of the film, but because of who they are.
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