The 2023 Brooklyn Film Festival Animation Program
By William J. Hammon, ActuallyPaid.com
One of the events I look forward to every year is the Animation Program at the Brooklyn Film Festival. Dozens of artists, from students to seasoned professionals, bring out works telling wildly varying stories in a panoply of styles where the only limit is their own imagination. And thankfully, the rest of the cinematic world is taking notice, with one of last year’s winners, My Year of Dicks, earning an Academy Award nomination (and if I had my druthers, it would have easily taken home the Oscar).
The 2023 class is yet another fantastic array of unique and inspiring content, from deeply intimate portraits of incarceration and self-image, to wacky deconstructions of classic fairy tale tropes. One film sees a man imagining the possibilities of career advancement only to see them dashed in a matter of moments, while another shows a worker on the bottom rung of society (his character model crafted from the material he uses for his custodial work) finding out that even in a limited space, he can make a positive impact on the world.
There are 28 films featured at this year’s festival, and as always, every single one of them has something insightful and thought-provoking to offer. While any of them would make for a worthy winner, here are my five personal favorites.
The Cat Got Her Tongue
Drawn with simple scribbles that meld, morph, and change shape from one scene to the other, the lyrical text describes an older woman fed up with how the world moves on without the likes of her, attempting to leave her and others in her situation to wither away, marginalized and ignored as they slip further and further into poverty.
The titular symbol of the tongue is used brilliantly as an illustration of how valid opinions and lived experience is casually dismissed or diagnosed as some form of mental illness if it is ever used to confront or inconvenience the oppressors. It is then contrasted quite well with the idea of cats, themselves walking contradictions because they’re natural predators who domesticated themselves and offer comfort and affection in spite of their instincts, to say nothing of the irony inherent in the stereotypical image of the “old cat lady.” While tragic, the film appears to poignantly argue that is the preferred fate of older women by society at large, so long as it gets a potential problem out of sight and out of mind.
Frontline Nurses: Dispatches from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Nearly seven million people have died worldwide, with more than a million of them within our borders (mostly because we were one of the only countries that somehow made it a political issue).
As the world has eased back into a state of normalcy, filmmakers have only started scratching the surface with regard to how to tell the stories of how the disease affected people from all walks of life. Frontline Nurses is one such noble attempt to put a (masked) face on the crisis.
Directors Cynthia and Alexander White opt for a sort of hybrid animated documentary/ recreation of first-hand accounts from nurses working when things were at their worst. Low on resources and information, and unprepared for the sheer volume of devastating and deadly infections, these nurses (all of their identities covered for their own safety) relate the trauma in brutally honest and intense terms. It’s very hard to watch, especially when you see scenes like a nurse decked out in a hazmat suit pressing signs against glass reading, “He’s at peace now. I’m so sorry” as the only means of comforting the loved ones of those who didn’t make it, but it’s crucial to do so. The COVID pandemic — and its fallout — is a global lesson from which we all have to learn and come to grips. For those who haven’t exposed themselves to post-pandemic art, this is a great starting point.
Hot Dogs
It starts out quite silly, with the balding, mustachioed man hocking his wares like a carnival barker, shouting out increasingly nonsensical slogans and pitches, including a very funny moment where the sales tax is more expensive than the actual hot dogs.
But then things take a decided turn, and the film goes from entertaining to profound. The vendor begins relaying stories of heartbreak, union-busting, social inequity, and suicide in a swirling existential crisis of faith. The sudden yet jarring tonal shift works wonders for two main reasons: One, the art style, utilizing jittery outlines with pastel and charcoal fills, gives the whole breakdown an ambiguous, almost dreamlike feel. Two, there’s a built in irony of hearing such soul-searching come from not just a character most of us wouldn’t look twice at on the street, but one the film itself establishes as bombastic and somewhat foolish, expertly toying with our expectations before pulling the rug out from under us as viewers.
Panchita!!
Made in conjunction with TECHO, a non-profit that builds transitional homes in the poorest areas of Latin America, Doug Bello’s film focuses on a young girl living in a slum with her grandmother, her creaky wooden house barely standing up straight. One day, she finds an old television with a VCR built in, and a cassette of The Little Colonel, the classic 1930s film featuring the iconic staircase tap dancing scene with Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Inspired, the girl imagines Robinson teaching her how to tap as well, but as her ramshackle home’s “floor” is just dirt and gravel, she has to find a flat, hard surface to make it happen, eventually leading to both disaster and redemption.
I absolutely love the designs on the characters, especially our lead. Using rounded forms with bright colors and a noticeable glossy sheen on the skin, the models feel like Hummel figurines brought to life, which is not only adorable, but is oddly synergistic with the association of Shirley Temple at her most precocious.
But most importantly, this film is based on the experiences of some of TECHO’s volunteers, coming across a girl very much like our protagonist in the course of their work. The ability to find joy in even the most dire of situations is awe-inspiring, and in a world filled with down moments, Bello does his level best to shine a spotlight on something purely positive, and it’s more than welcome.
Tomato Kitchen
This unexpected bit of horror is not only amazing to behold, but constantly leaves you questioning what you just saw, in the best way possible.
A man has dinner with colleagues at a restaurant that bears the film’s title and has an entirely tomato-based menu. When our lead accidentally runs into an anthropomorphized tomato person trying to escape from the kitchen, his entire world is shaken, as he learns the shocking truth about his meal. But the film isn’t content to simply rest on one stunning twist, oh no. The encounter forces the protagonist to examine his entire life leading up to this moment, exploring moments of knowing apathy, willful ignorance, and compromises of his own identity in the name of assimilation.
The art style is tremendous, with dark, muted blues, greens, and grays contrasted with almost neon reds to signify both the actual tomatoes and the thematic blood that is shed. The simple act of cutting and cooking a fruit is turned into grotesque horror at the highest of levels. All the sets and backgrounds are drawn at slightly askew angles, giving everything a surreal, sinister feel, as if the very environment is a cast shadow. If Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was a serious slasher film and not a comedic parody, this could well serve as its prequel.
But even better is the way the film begs for repeat viewings. I’ve watched this no less than five times, and with each subsequent run I find something new, from the conflicted look on our lead’s face as he stares at his own reflection in a bowl of tomato soup, to the way bus passengers all lean in the direction opposite him when he’s pensive, to the encroaching billboards that bombard the viewer (and the people of this world) with imagery about how normal and “fun” it is to eat tomatoes. The film raises so many questions about a range of different issues, from food ethics and animal cruelty to class warfare, mass marketing, and the dangers of a forced homogeneous society, all without a single line of spoken dialogue, and most crucially, all left to the viewer to interpret and answer for themselves. The best art is that which makes your mind race while still being a pure feast for your eyes and ears, and Tomato Kitchen is a prime example.
The Brooklyn Film Festival is going on now until June 11th. For more information, visit the festival’s website for details.
Originally published at https://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on June 5, 2023.
