Best Animated Short - 2019

Well, it has been a week since the Oscar nominations were announced, and as I had wrote, I saw three of the nominated films just from scouring the internet for the shortlisted films. For the first five days I checked frequently for the last two without much success. However, everything changed over the weekend. First, Daughter got posted onto Vimeo. It was posted by somebody whose name doesn't appear at all in the credits. Given the fact that it's been removed I have a feeling it was an unauthorized leak. And then I stumbled across a Vimeo post of Memorable, one that was posted almost ten months ago by the production company Vivement Lundi. I could have sworn it was not there every time I looked, which suggests that it was set on private for a while, but it had been made available for public view. So yippee, I've now seen every nominee in this category this year, and 368 of the 369 nominees in the category's history. 

*shakes fist at Rippling Romance*

But now that I have seen all the nominees, I must drop all of the plans that I had for tonight to bring you...my review. And then I can go back into hibernation with the exception of posting which of these five films had won the Oscar. 

Daughter (Dcera)

A young woman stands by the side of a hospital bed, looking down at the man occupying it. A constant beeping noise from the heart monitor fills the air. The man is her estranged father, and they look at each other, not knowing what to say. The silence is interrupted by a loud crash, as a small bird had flown into the plate glass window with such force that it broke the pane of glass. As the woman goes to inspect the damage, she thinks back to a moment in her childhood. She had found a young bird on the ground and ran to seek some reassurance from her father, who is too busy preparing supper to provide any relief. Left on her own, the daughter makes a cape and a mask to pretend that she is a young bird seeking comfort, but when her father would not reciprocate her affections, this drives a wedge between their relationship. The father spends the next few years trying to make amends, but is constantly rebuffed. Can they make up before it is too late? Daughter is an animated film by Tajikstan-born Czech animator Daria Kashcheeva. Most people think of Czech Republic either as the first half of Czechoslovakia before the country's dissolution in 1993 or as the premiere hockey powerhouse in Eastern Europe besides Russia. However, the Czech Republic has been the home of some of the most innovative animators in the world. Jiri Trnka and Jan Svankmajer are renowed the whole world over for their revolutionary work in stop motion animation whose films are infused with political commentary. The Academy has a long history of recognizing Czech films. In fact the first two nominees in the Best Animated Short category made outside the United States were both made in what is now the Czech Republic. There was Munro, the eventual winner made by the American Gene Deitch in a studio located in Prague. And then there was O Mista na Slunci, Deitch and Rembrandt Films would return to the Oscars in 1964 for Nudnik #2. While the Academy unfairly passed over the work of Trnka and Svankmajer, they turned their attention back to the Czech Republic 28 years later by nominating Reci Reci Reci by animator Michaela Pavlatova. While Pavlatova's erotic 2012 film Tram was left off the final nominees list, Czech animation returned to the Oscar conversation with Daughter. Daughter Kashcheeva had taken a somewhat convoluted path to animation. She was born in Tajikstan but worked in films in Russia as a sound designer. She felt unfulfilled and after a chance meeting with a couple of animators, she decided to relocate to the Czech Republic, enrolling in the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague to study the craft. Daughter serves as her thesis film, and Kashcheeva took a dedicated role in bringing her vision to life. She turned to stop motion animation, the medium made by the masters Trnka and Svankmajer. She made her puppets and covered them with papier-mâché, giving them a more naturalistic look. She hand painted the expressions, including the realistic eye movements that do more to convey emotion than most other stop-motion animated films in the past. Moreover, she took the bold step of filming the short with a camera technique that resembled hand-held cameras or dolly shots, an incredibly difficult method when combined wit stop motion animation. I will admit that when I just saw the trailer I found the camera somewhat disorienting, and the puppets kind of unattractive. However, having watched the whole film I realized that the presentation as a whole does well in presenting the film's central conflict, the troubled relationship between father and daughter. Kashcheeva had mentioned in interviews that she based the story on her own experiences and her own relationship with her parents. While she recalls the perceived injustices, she imagined the pain that would accompany taking these slights into adulthood from both sides of the relationship, and combined it with the symbolism of a baby bird. It's an emotional experience that stems effectively from the strong animation techniques.
Where Can I Watch It?
Unfortunately, the full copy of the film that was posted over the weekend had since been removed, so you'll just have to watch the trailer that was posted earlier and either catch a showing of the Oscar nominated shorts or hope an official version would get posted.

Hair Love

It is a brand new day, one that Zuri, a young African American girl, had circled on her calendar due to its importance. After greeting her cat that wakes her up, she gets ready to take on the day, but finds that her hair is not cooperating bursting out into a large mess. She takes her iPad and tries to follow along with a hairstyling channel called "Hair Love," but by the end of the video her hair winds up a mess. Her father Stephen comes across the disaster, and tries to fix it on his own, but he finds that his daughter's hair is a force to be reckoned with. After many failed attempts that resembles a fight more than a hairstyling session, Stephen finally gives up, much to his daughter's chagrin. With the special day passing them by, can the father make things up for Zuri before things become too late? Hair Love was a film distributed by Sony Pictures Animation that played before The Angry Birds Movie 2. However, the film actually began its life as something rarely seen in big studio releases: as a Kickstarter project. Director Matthew A. Cherry is a former football player with the University of Akron that made it onto a few NFL rosters and practice squads, but he never made it into a game, and eventually left the sport after a shoulder injury. He used the money he received from a settlement with his final team the Baltimore Ravens to move to Hollywood to begin a career in film. After serving as production assistants and making music videos, he eventually advanced to become a television director working together with comedian/filmmaker Jordan Peele, and served as an executive producer for the Best Picture-nominated BlackKklansman. With a comfortable spot in the world of filmmaking, Cherry decides to turn his attention towards an area that he felt is under-represented: the depiction of African American families in the world of animation. Animation has long been focused on telling stories about white Anglo-Saxons or anthropomorphic animals. Animated films about the black experience like Bebe's Kids generally become critical and financial failures. As of 2017 no animated film about the African American experience had been nominated at the Oscars since Sound of Sunshine - Sound of Rain back in 1983, but really that was a film about blindness that happened to have African American protagonists. The drought was finally ended with Dear Basketball which was nominated for and won Best Animated Short, but that had been about an NBA superstar with little connection towards a typical African American family. Cherry started the Kickstarter project inspired by videos of black fathers doing their daughter's hair for the first time. He felt that can depict a loving father-daughter relationship in an African American household. The project became a hit, and blew by both the $75,000 minimum and the $100,000 stretch goal, finally settling in at $284,000. With all the money needed an a little to spare, Cherry teamed with a group of veteran animators and went to work. They were able to recruit actress Issa Rae (who coincidentally announced the nominees with John Cho) to provide the voice of the vlogger. Their ultimate product was a heart-warming tale full of humor and love. Stephen's initial attempt at hairdressing was depicted a a literal fight in a boxing ring (complete with crowd sound effects that I swear came from Super Smash Bros.) The timing of jokes is done in a way to maximize the humor, while the tender moments hit hard as well. The animation is done with an appealing 2D style done with Nimble Collective full of pleasing colors. The relationship of Zuri with her cat is the source of some laughs, but really the film does a good job at showing the loving relationship between father and daughter. It's a wonderful contrast from the contentious relationship as depicted in Daughter. The film was so impressive that it was picked up by Sony Pictures Animation, fresh from their Oscar win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While The Angry Birds Movie 2 didn't make that big of a splash at the box office, Hair Love became a hit when posted online, and who can blame them? It really is delightful.
Where Can I Watch It?


Kitbull

A tiny kitten lives a simple but happy life in an alleyway. It has free rein to wander about San Francisco stealing food, ignoring inquisitive people on the street before settling back home in its empty cardboard box to snuggle against its beloved stuffed pink elephant. The kitten's placid existence is interrupted one day by the arrival of a big and curious pit bull. The kitten is distrustful of the newcomer and defends its territory, but once the dog was tied up the kitten has a chance to bond with it by playing with a bottle cap. However, after watching the pit bull ferociously attack a stuffed elephant, the kitten recoils in fear and loses all trust in its new neighbor. One rainy night the dog was kicked out of the building. As the kitten hides in its cardboard box, falling debris knocks down the shelter, and the kitten finds itself stuck in a multi-pack ring and the barbed wire. The dog walks over, untethered to the hapless kitty. Can the kitten survive the encounter? Pixar is one of the most renowned animation studios employee a legion of terrific animators. In 2018 they announced their SparkShorts program which gave these animators a stipend and time to produce their own independent shorts. It is unclear whether or not this initiative was created due to the success of many short films made within a previously existing co-op program, films such as The Dam Keeper, Borrowed Time, and Weekends, all of which received Oscar nominations. The first films debuted at a conference in late 2018 before getting qualifying theatrical nominations in early 2019. While Purl and Smash and Grab both received positive reviews, it was Kitbull that received the highest mark. The film was made by storyboard artist Rosana Sullivan, who had worked on films from Monsters University to Incredibles 2 to the Oscar-winning Piper. Sullivan had been a longtime fan of cat videos online, and she had long been thinking about making a film about a kitten that acted like an actual cat. She had tinkered with the idea during her down time, and it was selected as part of the SparkShorts program. She fleshed out the idea and fashioned a story about the kitten and a pit bull, a frequently misunderstood and often ostracized species of dog due to their oft-believed but never-verified aggressive nature. The story of the two characters' initial mistrust but gradual bonding is presented in a natural and believable manner. The film does drag at times in its storytelling, but at the same time it allows for a more realistic transformation of the pair's shared relationship. It also shines a light on the inherent cruelty of dog fighting, which is never verbally mentioned but heavily implied during the course of the film. The sport which had been made illegal in all 50 states but is still widely practiced today, a fact that was pushed to public consciousness with the dog fighting scandal involving former NFL quarterback Michael Vick. (The fact that Vick worked mostly with pit bulls probably didn't help the breed's reputation.) Kitbull differs from many of Pixar's other films as well its companion SparkShorts was that it eschewed Pixar's classic CGi style in favor of a 2D look. As Sullivan explained in interviews she had wanted the kitten to have more feline behavior than what is traditionally depicted in animation, and 2D animation allows for this better than CGi can. And having kittens and dogs that act much more realistically than what is traditionally seen in animation certainly adds to the feeling of authenticity of the film. While the animal behavior is more realistic, the character design is more stylized, with the kitten being a scrawny little thing with huge eye in its enormous head. It looks more like a makkuro-kurosuke / susuwatari in Studio Ghibli's Tonari no Totoro and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi than an actual cat. (It's no coincidence that Sullivan had reported Studio Ghibli as being one of her inspirations). The dialogue-free storytelling works well with its soundtrack and its diegetic sound. Overall it's a solid entry in the Pixar SparkShorts and continues the company's tradition of strong storytelling.
Where Can I Watch It?


Memorable

Louis is an elderly artist living in France who is dealing with some difficulties in his life. His wife Michelle is nagging at him about leaving meat in the car. Soon she is asking him to hand her things that don't look familiar at all. In fact things start to warp around him, leading him to question the identity of objects. Yet he puts forth a brave face, especially as strange-looking people ask him silly questions. As time goes by familiar things start going away, while people disappear around him. Even worse, a strange man is even following him into the bathroom. As Louis tries to cope with the changes in his life, even Michelle goes away. What does he have left to hold on to? Dementia is a neuro-degenerative disease defined by a progressive loss in memory. It is not just simple forgetting, but is marked by loss of executive functioning, the recognition of objects, and eventually the loss of ability to perform even the most basic functions such as self-care. It is highly associated with older age, and with the aging of the population it has become a modern health care crisis, exacerbated by the fact that there is no cure even after years of research. Many animated short films have come to address this issue, such as The Head Vanishes which made the Oscar shortlist, as well as last year's Oscar-nominated Late Afternoon. And now there is Bruno Collet's Memorable, a winner at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and now Oscar nominee. Each of these films address a different aspect of the insidious disease. The Head Vanishes addresses the paranoia and hallucinations that can arise in those suffering from dementia. Late Afternoon paints a portrait of a woman reliving her past while having a very shallow grasp of the present. Memorable addresses the increasingly tenuous grasp of reality as exhibited through the presence of illusions, or the misrepresentation of objects present in the environment, as well as loss of the executive functioning. Director Collet was reportedly inspired by American-born British artist William Utermohlen who had continued to produce art for over a decade after his diagnosis with Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. Memorable portrays this loss within Louis, starting with some simple forgetting before progressing towards a loss of planning activities, as shown in a vivid scene of a record playing with its cover on, as well as loss of form of objects. Besides the difficulties that Louis experiences, Memorable also shows the burden that the disease has on the individual's loved ones, in this case Michelle. She is left to pick up the pieces while getting doubted about the difficulties she faces by her own children as one scene shows. Moreover, the film is about the relationship between Louis and Michelle. Director Collet has described Memorable as a love story, and it shows it well later in the film as the couple comes together even with Louis's loss of recognition of his longtime wife and Michelle's increased exasperation with Louis's illness. The story is told with some fairly innovative use of stop-motion animation. The characters initially move with standard stop-motion animation, but as Louis's mind unravels there begins to be an increasing amount of abstraction in what he sees. This is portrayed onscreen as Louis sees a cell phone as a formless blob. As his disease progresses he begins seeing things as just simple moving brush strokes, as portrayed with green screen technology. The character design is also influenced by famous artists. As Louis's illness worsens he begins to resemble a character from a Van Gogh painting, while a physician interviewing him resembles a figure from Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Memorable is the most dialogue-heavy of any of this year's nominees, but the voice acting work by French actors Andre Wilms and Dominique Reymond are solid, even if does require the use of subtitles. Overall Memorable is a stylistic but very devastating look at one of the worst diseases of our generation.
Where Can I Watch It?
Well as I mentioned Memorable had been online since last March, but I wasn't able to find it until recently, which suggests that it was set on private for the longest time before being made available again recently. Unfortunately when I embedded it, it wouldn't play, so the only thing I do is link to it.

Sister (妹妹)

A man in mainland China looks back at his childhood, specifically his sister that is four years younger than him. She had always been a thorn in his side, pestering him with her incessant crying and her taking his toys when she was a baby, and later creating mischief where he ends up getting the blame. Yet they also take part in silly shenanigans, such as the time she planted a tooth that he had lost so that it would grow back. Yet behind these wistful memories lie a secret that is so dark and so tragic that it would completely change his life as he knows it. Sister represents an important milestone in the Best Animated Short category. It is the first and so far the only nominated film to be completely in Mandarin Chinese, which happens to be the most commonly spoken native language in the world. The prevalence of Mandarin Chinese is related to two factors: the establishment of the dialect as the standard language in both the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (also known as China), and the massive population in both of these countries. China has been the most populated country in the world for over 250 years, and current estimates place it at about 1.4 billion people, about 2/3 of whom grew up speaking Mandarin. (Meanwhile the population of the Republic of China ranks 56th at an estimated 23.5 million which is more impressive when you consider that it's a tiny island that ranks 134th in area. About 85% of the population speaks Mandarin). However, China's status as the most populous country is in jeopardy, as India is due to pass it sometime in the upcoming decade. Of course, this may stem from a concerted effort by the Chinese government to stem the population, which had expanded rapidly from the 1940s to the 1970s. The government experimented with a two-child policy before settling on a one-child policy in 1979, with a few exceptions. The highly controversial policy was enforced with forced contraception and abortions. After 35 years the rules were relaxed to allow for a two-child policy, but childbirth rates hadn't picked up. The policy was dissected around the world, and recently a few Chinese filmmakers that emigrated to the United States had picked it up. Wang Nanfu's One Child Nation was a critically acclaimed documentary that at one point was seen as a front-runner for the Oscar before ultimately falling short of a nomination. And then there's Sister, made by Siqi Song. She was born in China during the one-child policy to a family who already had a son. Her parents had gone through the bureaucratic red tape to be granted an exception to allow her to be born. She was one of the only kids growing up that had a sibling, a fact that stuck with her. Song developed a fascination in animation and filmmaking, and was eventually accepted into CalArts. While at CalArts she met Liu Bingyang, a photography student from China who told her about a sister that he never had because she was aborted. The idea stuck with her and eventually she made Sister her graduation film. The film was a stop motion film using needle felting and featured narration from Liu Bingyang, the man who had inspired the film. It begins as a rather straightforward look back at childhood, with the standard bickering between siblings. The film uses visual gags as a source of humor and symbolism, with the sister growing several times in size to signify her domination of the room with her crying, and then the boy pulling out her umbilicus to get her to shrink. Later after getting in trouble he got revenge by pulling out her nose like Pinocchio. It's rather funny, but at the same time an unspoken sense of melancholy pervades these scenes. The feeling grows as the slow reveal comes about the truth of the sister. It's probably fairly obvious for those who have some inkling of Chinese society in the 1990s, but still stark nonetheless. The animation with needle felting is fairly impressive. Having tried my had at needle felting a few years back (and failing miserably at it, which is why I review animated shorts instead of making them), the difficulty of creating these puppets seems unfathomable, especially since it includes the creation of placental vessels using the technique. The film also pays a small tribute to 2D animation with some original scenes. The narration by Liu Bingyang is somewhat dry, but it also adds to the stark feeling of the film. Sister manages to combine art with social commentary, and makes for an unforgettable film.
Where Can I Watch It?
Sister was available online in its entirety for several months, but with the onset of the Oscar nomination it was pulled, probably to get people to go out to the Oscar nominees showing. All that's left is the trailer. Too bad.

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Well, here are the five nominees. I end up talking more about them than giving my review of them, but I feel it is important to know the context that these films were made under to gain a full appreciation of them. As a result I consulted interviews with the filmmakers for each of the films. For Daughter I referred to interviews in Deadline and It's Nice That. For Hair Love I checked out the original Kickstarter page as well as an interview in The Undefeated. For Kitbull I looked up an interview in Deadline. For Memorable, I read interviews in Skwigly and Animation Magazine. For Sister I relied on interviews found in Animation World News, Animation Scoop, and Animation Magazine.

In all 87 of my previous interviews I've ranked these films by quality and by preference. While I can easily rank these films by preference, I realized I can't rank them by quality. These are all great films in different ways, and who am I to say if Hair Love is better than Sister or if Daughter is better than Memorable or if Kitbull is the best of all? I just can't. Perhaps this is sort of a copout, or maybe I'm just tired at spending seven hours to review five films (with meal brakes of course), but I am going to pass on ranking these films by quality. Here are my rankings by preference:

Sister > Hair Love > Kitbull > Memorable > Daughter