Stop motion
sensations

>>Wild Card shows off the work of
Concordia’s animation students

by MARK SLUTSKY

A couple of weeks ago Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema showed off students’ work in a week-long programme at the Cinéma du Parc. If you dug the stuff they had on display there, you’ll want to check out Wild Card, a night dedicated solely to animation works by Concordia students.

The screening, which runs at both 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at Théâtre Ste-Catherine, features a few of the films screened at the Parc showings, but many that were not. According to the organizers, the media on display range “from traditional stop-motion puppet animation to live-action pixilation, 3D Maya to 2D traditional, paper cut-outs and pastel drawings.”

Only three films were shown to the media in advance of the screening but each was impressive and accomplished in its own way. Guillaume Blackburn’s Diving Dan’s Day Out appears to this amateur’s eyes to be fairly traditional, if computer-assisted line animation and is a fractured, somewhat frenzied narrative about a deep-sea diver.

The action intentionally shuttles between completed-looking scenes and what appear to be concept drawings in motion; it’s a neat effect, assisted by tuba playing by one Michael Blackburn.

Alexandra Lemay’s This is not a love story is a moody stop-motion short, also somewhat disjointed in its storytelling, about a seduction that takes place between an alarmed-looking fellow and an impressively sinister… creature with the head of a Russian matrushka doll. With spasmodic editing and a dissonant-sounding soundtrack by Allison Fairhurst and Zoran, this is a creepy one—I mean that as a compliment.

Eva Cvijanovic’s Play, though technically stop-motion, kind of throws everything into the pot: drawings, live action footage, painting and more, set to a mournful soundtrack by La Bella Cubano. This one’s a bit hard to parse but it’s effectively enchanting and textured, with voice work by Yassin Alsalman aka the Narcisyst aka Mirror contributor Narcel X.

In addition to the screenings, music will be provided afterwards by Barbajan and yet another Mirror man, DJ Rupert Bottenberg.

At Théâtre Ste-Catherine
(264 Ste-Catherine E.) this
Saturday, May 31 at 7 p.m. and
9:30 p.m., $5. Info: (514) 719-1868
or (514) 510-7662

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