It's A Dream, I'm Sleeping

Darkness and light, as seen by VIFF’s favourite Buddhist erotist. Part of the TOKYO LOOP animation anthology produced by ImageForum Japan.

A lonely fisherman drifts into haunted waters in search of food and finds much more than he bargained for. Based on an Inuit folktale.

LAND is a fluid series of formal land animation experiments based upon the imprint of landscapes in various locations and intuitive interpretations of those movements. Shot in New York, Thimble Islands Bear Island, Connecticut, Armstrong Redwoods, Sonoma County, California, Hastings, England. note* (part of the EYE Filmmuseum Permanent Collection)

Tune in to the blind date woes of Rick and Becky.

ASTRAKAN

Because Quebec Sign Language cannot be captured on paper, videography has revealed itself to be the best way to represent this visual language. The first ‘comic strip’ in sign language, the film depicts snatches of conversations between various deaf and hearing protagonists. A visit to a silent world, where the hearing impaired ask us to listen to them.

Little Michael has vicious allergies, and when babysitter Meredith arrives for a night of no-nonsense, he's swiftly dispatched to the yard...where his delicate condition takes a turn for the worse.

The second essay about still dominant dark aspects of our modern society. It is conceived as a surreal anti-patriarchal thought experiment and raises important questions about gender, power, and social change, prompting us to reflect on how historical patterns of discrimination and oppression might be either repeated or overcome in a reversed gendered world. It challenges the viewer to confront their own assumptions and biases, and to consider the possibilities of a more equitable society.

Animator Ryan Larkin does a visual improvisation to music performed by a popular group presented as sidewalk entertainers. His take-off point is the music, but his own beat is more boisterous than that of the musicians. The illustrations range from convoluted abstractions to caricatures of familiar rituals. Without words.

Not long ago, a boy Makarka lived in this area. One day after his grandmother left for the city, Makarka cleared up and began to break trees, shoot nests with chicks, cut his own name on the trunk of a tree. An old oak tree made a remark to him: is it possible? On this insolent Makarka boldly said that nothing terrible. Then the angry trees and birds decided to teach the unfit boy a lesson, and something like that started, from which the bully reluctantly had to think and ask for forgiveness.

Strange places take shape in a torch’s beam of light and the sound of water droplets hitting the ground punctuates our footsteps. In the distance, we hear muffled music, where does it come from?

Two boys play poker on a dull afternoon. As one boy inadvertently touches and makes eye contact with the other, it sparks a beautiful, imaginative dance.

Tigre is an experimental film with animation applied directly onto film.

Scroll paintings prepared like film strips with successive images.

This animated short is a play on motion set against a background of multi-hued sky. Spheres of translucent pearl float weightlessly in the unlimited panorama of the sky, grouping, regrouping or colliding like the stylized burst of some atomic chain reaction. The dance is set to the musical cadences of Bach, played by pianist Glenn Gould.

A meditation on isolation through paint textures, video collage and sound

To save her father from certain death in the army, a young woman secretly enlists in his place and becomes one of China's greatest heroines in the process.

Short animation by Alvise Renzini inspired by a C.G. Jung's dream

A teacher spends a day in their classroom where nothing is what it seems.

The bell tower rings and the birds fly away. In the countryside on the outskirts of a small village, a dog tied to a very long rope, watches them disappear in the horizon. It’s time for him to go. Prance across fields. How far will his rope allow him to go?