Slamdance 2016 Animation Selections Revealed

Slamdance, the younger and more indie counterpart to Sundance, has announced the animation selections for their 22nd edition, taking place from January 22-28 in Park City, Utah.

Fourteen shorts were selected for the main animation competition and a couple other shorts snuck in through other categories. Slamdance generally favors hand-made approaches over CG, and personal animated films over big group productions. The Experimental MFA program at CalArts made a strong showing this year with four films in competition.

Check out all the animated shorts at Slamdance 2016:

Animated Shorts Program

• Bottom Feeders
  Director & Screenwriter: Matt Reynolds (USA)
  Two fictional species try to make it through the day in this bleak parody of the natural world.
• Flaws
  Director: Josh Shaffner (USA)
  An autobiographical, surreal rant about years spent in the service industry.
• Heila Ormur
  Director: Rose Stark (Iceland, USA)
  The slow savoring of horrible flavors in the body of a love gone bad.
• Here There
  Director & Screenwriter: Alexander Stewart (Croatia, USA) US Premiere
  A graphic form to memory’s malleable, straying lines.
• Lazy Daze
  Director: Brian Smee (USA) World Premiere
  Dog in the land where the good life takes you.
• Leftover
  Directors & Screenwriters: Tibor Banoczki, Sarolta Szabo (France) US Premiere
  Remains of food, remains of human relationships.
• Life is Rugged
  Director & Screenwriter: Simon Schnellmann (Germany)
  Five short sequences of line-drawing life are linked together by a black point.
• Mirror in Mind
  Director: SeungHee Kim (South Korea)
  A woman looks into her mind, chasing her ideals on a tightrope.
• My Dad
  Director: Marcus Armitage (UK) US Premiere
  A boy’s vividly-colored memories of learning everything from his dad, including racially-motivated violence.
• Pangs
  Director: Wendy Cong Zhao (USA) World Premiere
  Wading through bodily and emotional pangs.
• The Past Inside the Present
  Director & Screenwriter: James Siewert (USA) World Premiere
  An allegorical tale of a couple who attempt to renew their dying relationship by plugging directly into recordings of their memories.
• Ripple
  Director: Conner Griffith (USA) North American Premiere
  The shapes we make. An advertisement for planet earth.
• Still Life
  Director: Kevin Eskew (USA) North American Premiere
  Et tu doggy? Synchronicity strikes in the suburban Midwest.
• Worm
  Director: Becky James (USA) North American Premiere
  Wrapped in chains, a worm languishes in prison.

The following animated short is in the Anarchy Shorts program:

• Double-Blind No.1
  Director: The Double-Blind Experiments (Australia)
  Five VFX artists set out to test the theory that a fine-art technique relying on chance could be applied to a motion piece.
  

And this animated film appears in the Documentary Shorts:

• Stems
  Director & Screenwriter: Ainslie Henderson (UK) US Premiere
  For a brief moment, stop motion puppets crafted from found objects make beautiful music and then as quickly as they came to life, return to being inanimate objects.