My patronage of the Calgary International Film Festival not quite what I'd like it to be, there's only so much time, but last night I made it to "An Animator's World Shorts". Now I quite like animation, I'm thinking here of the Brothers Quay "Street of Crocodiles" (Rent their DVD's at Bird Dog Video), or Jan Svankmajer 's "Faust ", (again, Bird Dog. Most of these can be rented there. . ), but there was nothing here in that league. The opening film, "Saint Feast Day", is an amusing mix of animation styles, and this seems to be the hallmark of the show. Mixed styles of animation, some beautiful (see "Hungu "), others disturbing ("My Town"), some old school and even a CGI offering, "Perpetuum Mobile", which, while very professionally done, comes across as more of a student offering to Pixar than an award winning animation. (Humourously enough, the credits for it were as long as most feature films, and if you took the time to watch you would have been treated to the author crediting and thanking everyone born since Leonardo DaVinci [included] as a source of inspiration. . .). "Operator" is another such clip, a well animated, clever short about a man who calls God with a question. . .
My favorite, "Machine with Wishbone", showed delicate wire machines walking across dream landscapes populated with other machines, the kind of dreams Theo Jansen must have.
Overall, while there was merit in each piece the quality was more that of a graduating class of film school students than a worldwide festival.
Rating: 2/5
Note: If you're an animation fan, try viewing some of the early masters. Who can be found here: http://www.darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html