Animated / Brief Encounters · Bristol
142 films from 22 countries are recorded in the archive for this edition, with 3 award winners.
The ninth edition featured a major Danish cinema focus programmed by Catharine Des Forges, reflecting the impact of Dogme 95 on a new generation of filmmakers. Nik Powell, newly appointed Director of the NFTS, delivered the Brief Lecture. A tribute to the recently deceased Stan Brakhage honoured the experimental film pioneer, and Andrea Arnold's Wasp had an early festival screening before going on to win the Academy Award. The competition programme, selected by Marni McArthur, drew from over 1,300 submissions, with strands including Late Lounge, BBC New Talent Awards, and UK Film Council Digital Shorts.
A Boy (Danny Young) looks back on a party in which everything went tragically and shockingly wrong for his friend (Pippa Moss).
In a story told without dialogue, a young girl overlooks her mother's infidelity.
A very alternative lifestyle programme about making egg fried rice.
A dark day in the life of Jim O'Connor (played by Dudley Sutton) – an acutely lonely pensioner with high hopes and a subscription to a Golden Oldie dating service.
A Boy (Danny Young) looks back on a party in which everything went tragically and shockingly wrong for his friend (Pippa Moss).
Well known Irish showband singer Des Smyth is brought to life by a young woman impatiently waiting for the man of her dreams.
Nothing in life is black and white, but just no things are very hard for this family man as he struggles to make sense of what has happened to him.
"I am so bored with being a security guard in this top secret gene splicing laboratory. Nothing ever happens." Don't believe Gary's opening line in the best zombie horror comedy to come out of Ireland this week.
A film for anyone who has ever wondered what bored Irish bachelor farmers who live with their mothers get up to on those long winter nights, involving a ping pong ball and a rocking chair.
Three mysterious characters of ambiguous intention collide in the middle of who-knows-where. Absurd coincidence in absurd circumstances, but who will survive before nightfall?
Hostility between an asylum seeker and a war veteran living on the same council estate in London makes way for an unlikely friendship as they realise they are both victims of war.
In a captivating monologue, a fifty something woman powders her nose in a disco fever nightclub bathroom, tells her story of falling in love with a man half her age. Starring Sue Johnson.
A young woman returns home, apparently amidst World War II victory celebrations. In this mix of live action and animation, a series of ghostly visions unfolds revealing that a house can hold memories as much as a mind
Glenda, an unemployed misfit falls in love with Freddie, her goldfish. As her search for work founders, her love for Freddie deepens and she feels her place is at his side.
A series of short tragic-comic sketches illustrate the breakdown of a couple's relationship. All set at their kitchen table, we see fifteen telltale signs of a relationship in meltdown.
A stunningly filmed, intimate experimental documentary that charts the director's return journey back to her mother's house 20 years after the Iranian Revolution
An illustration how technology changes the way we see the world; diagrams of chemistry apparatus and educational footage react and combine in this quirky adaptation of a poem by Nobel Laureate chemist Roald Hoffman
Sigmund Freud casts his long shadow across a series of still photographs depicting daily life on a Viennese street corner, so the static world slowly and subtly comes to life and an increasingly improbable chain of events and relationships starts to emerge.
A lonely man living in a desert tries to pluck up the courage to break out of his solitude, but discovers that to do so is even harder than he thinks
The hostage, the thief, her house and his makeover. An escaped convict holds a woman captive in her home. Alone with a paintbrush, nature takes its course in this comedy starring David Thewlis and Alison Steadman.
A man finds a rope hanging from the sky
A young Korean foreign student longs for home. In her part-time job as a care assistant she finds her co-workers and the residents maddening.
Martin goes for a drink with his mates who take a violent dislike to his new appearance. A comedy.
Terry has a rubber mask stuck on his head. After about half an hour he manages to get it off, but then there's another one underneath, then another, then another…
Nothing is the same again after a game of spin-the-bottle at a teenage party sets off a chain reaction.
A controller in a London cab office looks for a driver to pick up a fare from Victoria Station. The driver who answers has never heard of Victoria Station. And he already has a 'P.O.B.', a very unusual one
Christoffer Boe won the Camera d'Or this year at Cannes with Reconstruction. This is his graduation film, a kaleidoscopic meditation on love, and a major indicator of a very original talent.
Emil, a DJ, finds himself trapped in a shabby hotel room after spending the night clubbing. Dagur Kari Petursson's first feature, Noi the Albino, is released in the UK on 14 November.
This exemplary short film foreshadows Dogme's ability to avoid melodrama in depicting the most extreme moments of human existence. Vinterberg's Festen announced the Dogme project to UK audiences, and his eagerly awaited follow-up, It's All About Love, arrives here in January 2004.
A black comedy about a mother and daughter fighting to the death. Starring Helen McCrory and Sylvia Syms.
A graphic, shocking and darkly comic animated documentary about a startling aspect of mental health care in Victorian Britain. Very short; very sharp.
A powerful document of love and loss told by two war widows, using an intimate and honest approach to storytelling.
In a white world a busy girl is filled with puzzled dreams and hectic thoughts. Commissioned by South East Dance and Lighthouse.
Based on a poem by Stevie Smith, this is an engaging yet disturbing portrayal of the apparent idyll of a family day by the sea.
15 is inspired by the true-life account of three troubled youths searching for acceptance in a fast moving society. Feeling ostracised and self-destructive, they seek worldly pleasures to obliterate their insecurities
A lonely solitary fisherman drifts into haunted waters in search of food. There he encounters a woman who was cast into the sea, only to return in a frightening form. Based on an Inuit folktale.
Zahara lives a double life between her Muslim family and her Danish boyfriend, until the two worlds collide when she discovers that she is pregnant. How far will she go and how much will she lose?
A documentary about a "graveyard" for old cars. Through sound, newsreel footage and clever camera work, the vintage cars relive their pasts and begin to come alive
A little girl's father leaves Korea in 1976 to work in Australia. With her mother, she makes audiotapes to send to him every day. She speaks to him, reads to him and sings to him in her mother tongue
A musical comedy about the temptations on offer at parties. Our singer, and protagonist goes out without his girlfriend and tries to avoid cheating on her by repeating to himself, 'no, no, no'
Cars depart or arrive, and establishing shots of houses or hospitals are taken out of context, cut up and collaged to create new meanings and imaginary scenarios
What is a film festival really? Director Caroline Bohman reveals all in this animated film
John, a 52-year-old long-distance lorry driver, rents a porn movie and to his horror finds that his daughter Mia, 21, is the star. The discovery is the start of his kind-hearted but clumsy attempt to renew contact with his daughter
Gomez gets a job as a security guard in a department store. Placid by nature and confronted with his first shoplifter, he realises that he may not be cut out for this line of work
Three statues on the Mont des Arts in Brussels – a king, a queen and a medieval knight – three refugee children and an imaginary conversation
In an infinite process, you try to make sense of the signs, to get everything straight in your mind, but something underlying surfaces every time you try, as if the facts don't exist
Fred cooks a delicious anniversary meal for his wife Tara, but she just wants to get drunk with her friends and watch football.
Twenty-seven seconds, thirty-three takes: one story
A man who thinks he has to sacrifice people to God's will eventually becomes a sacrifice to his own belief
A group of boys play in a dangerous quarry. Their leader turns into a self-proclaimed demon, an antichrist. In turn, each of the boys take the game a few steps too far
A kaleidoscopic journey from life to death and back that speaks subtly of the cycle of existence and the transience of the moment
Travel at break-neck pace through classic film chases and golden movie moments. Made using paper print-outs of found frames, which are then folded and animated.
A stark portrayal of the Australian outback and the struggle to live there, using Henry Lawson's poem Past Carin' to narrate the unique experience of life on an isolated station.
A lonely twelve-year-old is too shy to sing at the daily choir practice. Only at home is he able to lean out of his window and sing.
Eli and Tarald sell lottery tickets for the benefit of blind children in Africa. A short film inspired by the Fremskrittspartiet (a Norwegian right-wing political party)
A morning routine as you have never seen before. A young family wakes up to a new day, but the same daily drill. There's the butter, there's the toaster, there's my wonderful wife…
Guro has invited Bjarne home for dinner. Sometimes, though, the smallest thing is enough to make you feel that you hate your friends
Temptations are everywhere at the beach. Elias, a devoutly religious priest, fights his lust, but doubt is starting to get the better of him.
A man tries to escape from his mundane existence. Along the way, he is faced with a series of obstacles, including a briefcase full of preconceptions and a corporate refrigerator bent on world domination.
Beautifully edited historical footage of war, updated with a contemporary soundtrack and conveying an important message.
A man on a tube train announces his quest for true love to his fellow passengers, and appeals to anyone on board to get off at the next stop if they want to take him up on his unusual offer.
The 26th day after the disaster. Two survivors search for others. All they find are more bodies. There is nothing but static on the radio. Are they the only two left alive?
On hearing she may not have long to live, a woman in her fifties goes out looking for love; in all the wrong places
Mick, a seasoned war correspondent and photographer, thinks that he can see through the horror of the environment he works in, until he falls victim to his own convictions
A nostalgic visual representation of one man's return to the city where he grew up.
The theory that there are only three options in life is illustrated by the way in which we hang and dispense toilet paper – an everyday choice that can say a lot about a person
Contrasting images of contemporary Kabul and the Pandjsher Valley, located in the north-east of Afghanistan, form an investigation into a future that can only be guessed from the desires that emerge as peace is installed.
A new event for the Turin Winter Olympics 2006, ski-jumping in pairs is a sport only for the very daring, the very skilled or the very stupid.
A man exploits a case of mistaken identity to win the heart of the woman he loves. But his disguise slips and he has to work twice as hard to regain his lost love.
For the last time a projectionist leaves the cinema where he has worked for many years. As he passes through the darkened city, projections from his past life appear on walls and empty windows.
Solvieg wants a truce with her neighbour and old friend, Berit. Can a spade provide the solution? A film about digging up the past, burying the hatchet and unearthing bottled-up emotions
A thought provoking encounter between two men, a hen and the local train from Jessheim
Reality or fiction? Shocking scenes from everyday life filmed using a hidden camera.
Orman is having a futile conversation on his mobile phone. He is running back to his office but getting nowhere and someone (or something) is intercepting his calls.
An investigation of the phenomenon of the boyband in which the artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay himself plays all members of the band
On the street three drinkers take a refreshing look at social classification.
Two people are unable to be together in the same space. Their disagreement is fuelled by technical difference; the woman exists on videotape and the man on film.
The first short film directed by internationally renowned photographer, Rankin. A stylish couple's stormy relationship undercuts convention with a violent twist.
Elderly Ruby struggles through the twilight of her life, bullied and confused by all and sundry. But does her doddery demeanour hide a darker side?
Two girls, two guys: Sex like you've never seen
Facts on farts. An intimate introduction to the fine art of fart, starts and departs with a fart. With great music from rears to ears
Alfie, a young boy, and his teddy, Monkey, escape life on earth to find the long-lost 'Aponauts', who were sent into space as test pilots by NASA throughout the 1950s and 60s.
Ken and Tina met and fell in love… then they became trapeze artists. Together they embarked on a life that was to be intense and demanding, both physically and emotionally.
A young boy catches his first fish, but is definitely not prepared for the consequences.
A series of experimental digital shorts, part live action and part animation, that examine the boundary between the documentation of an event and its fictionalisation.
For years women have had to put up with glamorised images of themselves everywhere they look, but the tables have turned, as Nigel is about to find out.
A multimedia montage reflecting the frustration and insecurity facing asylum seekers in this country.
In a story told without dialogue, a young girl overlooks her mother's infidelity.
Friendly, jovial, popular and successful? John Claverdeek had better watch his back…
Helen is bored cleaning up after her slovenly couch-potato husband. Until she meets her electric lover. Read instructions before use.
Sometimes it's better to shut up than put up. A cautionary tale about the morning-after-the-night-before.
Speed dating: Gujarati style. With only two minutes to prove himself worthy to the ladies, smooth-talking Joti can more than handle his own.
Christmas is a time of festive cheer and happy families: except when Uncle Douglas comes to call. A black comedy with more revelations than a morning with Kilroy.
In the 1990s, Brakhage concentrated mainly on hand-crafted films, usually painting directly on the filmstrip to manifest his 'hypnagogic vision'.
This short documentary, commissioned by ARTE and shot in January 2003, provides an invaluable introduction to Brakhage and his work.