Sixteen Animated Shorts Selected for Slamdance 2017

Slamdance, the younger and more indie counterpart to Sundance, has announced the animation selections for their 23rd edition, taking place January 20-26, 2017, in Park City, Utah.

Thirteen shorts were selected for the primary animation competition, and three other shorts appear in other sections of the festival. Like last year, the Experimental MFA program at CalArts made a strong showing this year with four films in competition. The programmers also turned their attention to the Far East, selecting four films from Asian countries, as well as multiple films by Asian-American creators.

Here’s a look at all the animated shorts at Slamdance 2017. When available, we have included trailers or the actual film itself:

Animated Shorts Program

• Auto (USA) US Premiere
  Director: Conner Griffith
  Synopsis: Cars dance on highways, crowds of people wash across sidewalk shores.
• Batfish Soup (USA)
  Director: Amanda Bonaiuto
  Synopsis: Wacky relatives give way to mounting tensions with broken dolls, boiling stew and a bang.
• Chella Drive (USA) Us Premiere
  Director: Adele Han Li
  Synopsis: A disembodied memory of adolescence in a Southern Californian suburb. The stuck-stillness of endless summer is disrupted only by a passing El Niño.

  

• Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw) (USA)
  Director: Renee Zhan
  Synopsis: Flap flapflapflapflap flap. A large bird and a small boy cohabit in an unhappy relationship, trapped by four walls and a mutual codependency. The fragile balance of their existence is cracked by an un-eggs-pected arrival.
• Insect Bite (USA)
  Director: Grace Nayoon Rhee
  Synopsis: A tiny bug tries to figure out what it wants to become.
• It Is My Fault (China) North American Premiere
  Director: Liu Sha
  Synopsis: This work utilizes the own approach of the digital medium itself to deconstruct, to form the subliminal synesthesia visually and to create a fictional experience for the mind.

  

• Monkey (China) US Premiere
  Director and Screenwriter: Shen Jie
  Synopsis: One of the three monkeys died.
• My Father’s Room (South Korea) North American Premiere
  Director and Screenwriter: Nari Jang
  Synopsis: Sometimes, family members can be worse than strangers.
• The Noise of Licking (Hungary)
  Director and Screenwriter: Nadja Andrasev; Short story by: Ádám Bodor
  Synopsis: A woman is being watched every day by the neighbor’s cat, as she takes care of her exotic plants. Their perverted ritual comes to an end when the cat disappears. Next spring a peculiar man pays her a visit.
• Plena Stellarum (USA)
  Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Wade
  Synopsis: Neon ghosts dreaming in dead landscapes.
• Q (USA) US Premiere
  Director: James Bascara
  Synopsis: A bashful encounter.
• Remember (Japan)
  Director and Screenwriter: Shunsaku Hayashi
  Synopsis: “Leaving home, ‘I’ got a phone call. As ‘I’ answered it, the house exploded. ‘I’ went to work and continued as normal”…
• Serpentine (USA) North American Premiere
  Director and Screenwriter: Bronwyn Maloney
  Synopsis: A young woman’s reflective fantasy arouses a surreal exploration of sensuality, self-esteem, and deeply rooted fears.

The following two animated pieces will appear in the Anarchy Shorts Program.

• Lighter Click (USA) World Premiere
  Director: Robbie Ward
  Synopsis: An odyssey through a mysterious psychedelic landscape full of monsters and secrets both beautiful and dark.
• TheBox (USA) US Premiere
  Director(s): Jack Turpin, Davy Walker
  Synopsis: An expressionistic journey through the gilt-pop-entrapment in which we find ourselves.

  

The following animated short will precede the feature You Never Had It: An Evening with Bukowski:

A Narrative Film (USA)
Director: Michael Edwards
Synopsis: The most narrative narrative never narrated. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end…. It is at once both a three-act assault on the conceit of the traditional narrative, and also perhaps, a futile attempt to escape the narrative impulse of cinema.