This year’s Manipulate Festival has included a 3 stranded programme of international shorts, a section of which is reviewed here. Seeing short films from other eras is a rare treat as it is a witnessing of the breadth of imagination that has been brought to their animated form.
The opening film, To the Future (La Fantasmagorie), was made in France in 1908 by Émile Cohl and is considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon so was an absolute privilege to watch. Drawing attention to the craft, the creator’s hand is shown making the first white marks on a black board, a move that can be regarded as radical when seen nowadays by the likes of Will Anderson. The clownish wee figure morphs himself through various scenes in this 1 minute long cheekily anarchic delight.
Using a pinscreen animation technique, Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker created quite a creepy atmosphere with Night on Bald Mountain (Une Nuit sur le Mont Chauve) made in 1933 in France. Composer Modest Mussorgsky provided a dramatic score to the nightmare images that ended with peaceful imagery after the near 9 minute screening.
Again from France, Jean-François Laguionie created a 9 minute long romantic fantasy in 1965 with The Girl and the Cellist (La Demoiselle et le violoncelliste). Featuring sea scenes, this beautifully coloured hand drawn piece is gentle and playful with the bonus of a happy ending.
Making concise and comic comment in a very short time about dilemmas women have in the workplace, along with a bit of surreal fun too comes from Monique Renault in the Netherlands with the 2 1981 films, Borderline 1 and 2. The pleasant brown line drawings over a pale green background belie serious comments on social issues.
A more recent film 2019 from Belgium is the intriguing Freeze Frame from Soetkin Verstegen. This stop motion shot in b/w shows identically and immaculately dressed figures repeating tasks with blocks of ice giving an air of futility in their never ending task.
Made the same year in France by Frédéric Doazan is Windshriek (Hurlevent). Over its 6 minutes, we see a book that stays strangely static on a path while the words fly off its pages forming fantastical new shapes before filling the pages again during a hurricane.
Outstanding among this selection is another 2019 creation, this time from Frank Mukunday in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 10 minute long Machini, that features dialogue in French and starts with live chalk drawing that is a background against which stop motion figures made of what looks like sticks and stones interact. It is rusty, industrial and literally gritty showing the cost of lives in creating wealth for others and how this is a pattern over generations. The whole thing is utterly remarkable.
Florence Miailhe’s 2024 film Papillion (Butterfly) seems like a feature in comparison to the 1908 opener, the painted animation in soft bright hues carrying a heavy message as it shows a man swimming while memories linked to water return to him. Covering racism, Nazi occupation, loss and separation, the film is inspired by the story of Alfred Nakache who was a champion swimmer in the butterfly stroke in France. An original score from Pierre Oberkampf adds to this already stunning film.
This review reflects just a section of the International Shorts that were available with themes ranging from the playful to the poignant to the political that give a flavour of the astonishing range of talent and style in animated filmmaking.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 