4 feature fillms to compete at Ottawa 2012
The OIAF has selected 4 feature films to compete for its 2012 edition.
- ARRUGAS (WRINKLES)IGNACIO FERRERAS/PERRO VERDE-CROMOSOMA/SPAIN, 89' [review]
Based on Paco Roca´s award winning comic book, this Goya-awarded film describes the friendship between Emilio and Miguel, two aged gentlemen shut away in a care home.
Daring and innovative, Arrugas has had so far its own festival career
- Le Tableau (THE PAINTING) JEAN-FRANCOIS LAGUIONIE/AXIA FILMS INC./FRANCE, 76') [review]
In an unfinished painting, live characters are classified into three groups: Toupins (a French pun: tout peints, All Done), who have been fully painted, Pafinis (Halfies), who are missing some coulour, and Reufs (Roughs), who are nothing more than simple sketches.
The French veteran animation master Jean-François Laguionie (Palme D'Or), returns with a celebration of colors and incomplete endeavors to understand life. César-nominated.
- BABELDOM (PAUL BUSH/UK/ANCIENT MARINER, 81')
In ancient times they talked of a city in which you could meet yourself at birth and on your deathbed. If a city ever existed in which the past and the future were united with the present, it would exist now, and forever.
A provocative science-fiction documentary and an elegy to urban life.
- Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan, US, 130')
Meet three characters who live in a rust belt town called Magguson and work at its local newspaper.
Earl Gray, whose soporific gardening-advice radio show always seems to have heavy hidden messages about his views on life; Gentian Violet, a single woman who opens the film by running over a nun and hiding her body; and Victor Blue, a newspaper paste-up man with the smallest, pettiest ambitions, like getting his institutionalized mother to grant him the title to the family pickup truck he frequently drives drunk.
Consuming Spirits references both alcohol and divine power, and most characters walk shakily between self-medication and self-poisoning, making the film feel like both a profound realization and a bad trip.
The 2012 edition of Ottawa International Animation Festival runs from 19-23 September.
Its preliminary programme includes a tribute to the puppet master Barry Purves, and a reminder of the irreverent art of the US independent animator Ralph Bakshi.