The Legend of the North Wind

This short probes the taboos around a very particular second-hand trauma, leading us to a more universal understanding of human experience.

Three Russian street kids, who live on their wits in a train station, take off to the countryside hoping to make it across the border to a better life in Poland. They are alternately looking for tenderness and pushing it away because they sense that it is a sign of vulnerability they can ill-afford. Kędzierzawska has the rare ability to take the world of children on its own terms. There is not a false note in this dazzlingly beautiful and emotionally involving story of three kids trying to find their path to a new life. - Adelaide Film Festival

Spectacle is proud to present HEAD SPACE, a showcase of animated works exploring dimensions both interior and outlying. Featuring an extremely talented and creative group working in a diverse array of styles, the shorts wander through strange and sometimes sketchy landscapes, including alternate-universe appliance stores, the ramblings of Charles Manson, environmental catastrophes in the Dutch style of painting, and a houseplant’s musings. Some, like Sally Cruikshank’s Make Me Psychic, are established classics; others feature newer animators working in looping GIF format, presented away from the small screen’s momentary pleasures to fully appreciate the art that it is. Occasionally gross, often beautiful, and always interesting, HEAD SPACE is a sampler of the thoughts happening inside and out of each frame.

Leo's dreams of being an international drag superstar are hard fought working in a fish cannery in Alaska.

A story about childhood - real and the dreams. After finding a magic shell young Kačenka uses it to model her family life on the sea shore.

Six months after the events depicted in The Matrix, Neo has proved to be a good omen for the free humans, as more and more humans are being freed from the matrix and brought to Zion, the one and only stronghold of the Resistance. Neo himself has discovered his superpowers including super speed, ability to see the codes of the things inside the matrix and a certain degree of pre-cognition. But a nasty piece of news hits the human resistance: 250,000 machine sentinels are digging to Zion and would reach them in 72 hours. As Zion prepares for the ultimate war, Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are advised by the Oracle to find the Keymaker who would help them reach the Source. Meanwhile Neo's recurrent dreams depicting Trinity's death have got him worried and as if it was not enough, Agent Smith has somehow escaped deletion, has become more powerful than before and has fixed Neo as his next target.

The human city of Zion defends itself against the massive invasion of the machines as Neo fights to end the war at another front while also opposing the rogue Agent Smith.

Utilizing the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, the epic Indian tale of exiled prince Ramayana and his bride Sita is mirrored by a spurned woman's contemporary personal life, and light-hearted but knowledgeable discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppets.

As a little girl, Federica fantasized about having beautiful long hair that would grow back as soon as she cut it, about never-ending cones of cotton candy and about countless adventures that took her to the far side of the world. Now a charming thirty-something-single woman, Federica's fantasies have evolved, adding lovers, stardom, and motherhood to her waking dreams, where Federica continues to press for her everyday life to be as real as the fantasies that invade her. Unfortunately, Federica's daydreams can only provide a meager distraction from the reality she faces. Her career as a successful playwright is heading south, her boyfriend is pressuring her to start a family, a former lover wishes to rekindle an old affair, her sister is barely talking to her, her brother is self-centered and her loving father is terminally ill. And as if to make matters worse, Federica is rich, too rich, and the guilt that consumes her because of it is pushing her over the edge.

Documentary that follows the lives of two pirates and their community on the Somali coastline; what are the incentives of the pirates, why did they become pirates, how did they grow up in a country with political chaos, war and extreme poverty? The narrative structure is built around two interweaving story-lines; one depicting the "present", the daily lives of the pirates and their community, and the second in the "past", revealing through epic animation, the unfolding of a recent hijacking.

I remember the games I played when I was young. We were happy playing together, but, looking back, I realize I used the games to satisfy my own desires. It was a child’s selfcentered behavior. But adult lovers, too, display immature sides in their relationships. Consumed by self-love, they act like children. I have tried to illustrate this kind of love through the metaphor of children’s games.

Emily, Selena and Jackie - known to their 50 thousand YouTube fans as The 3 Tails - finally bring their journey to the big screen. Their mermaid adventures have enchanted fans for more than five years, as the girls struggle to understand the meaning of their special gift, protecting their secret from the world. Even their parents don't know that they have the ability to transform into mermaids. In The 3 Tails: A Mermaid Adventure, their lives are threatened after a stranger learns of their abilities and kidnaps one of the girls in order to harness her DNA. During a perilous ocean rescue mission, they discover that mermaids are not the only endangered species in the sea.

In this unusual romance, hand-tinted sand becomes a metaphor for two souls as they join and separate. A lonely fish, hooked by an angler's line, encounters another in the same dire situation. As the two struggle, the physical connection moves deeper. Is it love or merely a will to survive?

The Chipmunks and the Chipettes go head to head in a hot air balloon race, and the winner gets $10,000. Unbeknownst to the participants, the "race" is actually a diamond smuggling ring!

Step back into the imaginative and frankly terrifying world of Becky & Joe with Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. In this episode: Some things change over Time.

Nyosha is a ten year old girl. She dreams of buying a pair of shoes during the reality of a pitiless war. She believes that because of her shoes, she will stay alive.A range of animation techniques brings together the dream and the reality and tells Nyosha's story.

Rebecca Sugar's thesis film from New York’s School of Visual Arts.

The end of evolution awaits us in a wasteland dominated by bizarre trash formations, dust and rock. From the scattered remains of a long forgotten culture an electric ecosystem rapidly evolves into the ultimate form of existence.

Animated interpretation of the Bizet opera, second in a trilogy.

Animated interpretation of the Bizet opera, first in a trilogy