Sound of Sunshine - Sound of Rain

When Bill Babbitt realizes his brother Manny has committed a crime he agonizes over his decision to call the police.

Desperate to find the man of her dreams, sweet and plain Ava tries a last ditch effort, speed dating. But the absurd cast of characters she encounters makes her wonder if being single is not so bad after all.

A nightingale bird discovers a true lover when she witnesses a young university student talk with great passion about his beloved. The Nightingale goes on a quest to find the red rose the Student needs win his lovers heart, but this comes at a chilling price. Based on the classic fairytale by Oscar Wilde.

A young woman is pulled into a bizarre sub-world by a Chinese takeout box.

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.

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

Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?

A stop motion film about an oddball felted character who slips through floors into the past and the deepest parts of his psyche in his pursuit of self-understanding.

The true story of John Romulus Brinkley, a small-town Kansas doctor who discovers in 1917 that he can cure impotence by transplanting goat testicles into men. And that’s just the tipping point in this stranger-than-fiction tale. With the balls of a P.T. Barnum, the gonads of goats, and the wishful dreams of flaccid men, Brinkley amassed a fortune, was almost elected Governor of Kansas, invented junk mail and the infomercial, and built the world’s most powerful radio station. By the time all of the twists and turns of Brinkley’s story are revealed, Nuts! certainly earns its title.

Cúilín Dualach lives in a small town in the west of Ireland. He is the apple of his mother’s eye, yet his father shows him little affection. Everywhere he goes, people stare at him. Cúilín strives to fit in as best he can but that can be a difficult thing to do when your head is on backwards!

One march ends, a journey begins. In a desert land, the last breath of a giant creature spurs the exodus of an entire people.

The two remaining puppets learn about eating healthy, but things go awry when they receive a mysterious phone call.

The dance floor of a cruise ship. As each passenger is chosen, they choose a song on the jukebox and dance to it. But one passenger, playing a joke on another, selects a different song first. He keeps choosing that song, and eventually fills the jukebox with coins. It plays the same song over and over, and everyone is compelled to dance with the ship itself getting sick, while the man who was the brunt of the joke escapes in a rowboat.

The history of empire. A British bulldog answers his mistress's call. He tacks down the Union Jack to cover the British Isles, then begins playing with a small ball that's the world. At first it's innocent play. The dog discovers tea in India; then, the dog shakes gold out of Africa. Gradually, innocence gives way to more and more ferocious play with the ball. We see terrorized women and children as the dog becomes an enslaving potentate. Harmless English archetypes benefit from colonial riches. Then the world begins to grow, and the dog changes too, from bulldog to effete lap dog.

A heavyset woman who keeps being harassed by her aerobics instructor and her attempts to get even with him on a Body Beautiful contest.

In an outer-world night, creatures that live beneath human consciousness emerge and take hold of the narrator, dissecting his spirit and dismembering his thoughts. He beholds a mythical eternity filled with shadowy industrial scenes and monochrome textures—a heavenly hell of unending life and death.

A precocious young girl makes a new friend when a tiny boy pilot drops out of the sky on a broken flying machine. Now she must race against time to return him home, before her new friend becomes stranded on Earth forever.

A boy casts aside everything in pursuit of his dream, a quest we all share: the quest to find a place he can call home, even if it's underwater. He loves to swim with fishes and builds an ingenious machine to be able to dive.

It's midnight in a graveyard. The principal characters are spooks, ghosts, bats, bells, and, at the end, the sun. As midnight strikes, 12 spooks appear, then two ghosts. They move to the music's rhythm. Against the black night, they are blue and yellow. Bats appear as does a xylophone of bones. Mist rises, spooks swirl. A bell tolls. The sky turns light blue, the ghosts' dance slows. Then black night returns bringing intimations of frenzy. Bones play snare drums; spooks peek out of square graves. Scary faces appear. Frenetic movement takes over. A rooster crows and all return to earth as the sun's light appears.

In WWII Czechoslovakia, an old toymaker incorporates secret messages in his models to fool the Germans. They find him out and he flees. As the Gestapo officer hunts around he is attacked by the toys, who send him packing. Live action and stop motion short by Hermína Týrlová.