Animation Block Party is an annual Brooklyn, NY film series showcasing a variety of different short animated films. In its 7th year, 2010’s ABM — taking place from July 30 to August 1 — has five distinct programs, with the first debuting at the Automotive High School in Williamsburg as a part of the summer Rooftop Films series.
18 distinctly unique animated shorts from different creators were featured, ranging in length from one to ten minutes, covering the gamut of animation techniques from CGI to stop-motion. While ABP presenters attest that each of the five programs has its own distinguishable flavor, it’s undeniably difficult to find a common thread weaving the 18 mismatched animations of the premier program together. Regardless of some slow-moving and oddly placed films, the better works of the group managed to make up for their flawed counterparts.
Rusty’s Long Journey Home documents the self-narrated detective work of a dog trying to track down his lost family. The two-and-a-half minute long caper was easily the most comedic of all the films, eliciting the most audible response from the audience.
Hubo is a short computer-animated gem driven not by narrative, but from the quirky interactions of a child-like robot and shape-shifting red rubber ball. Seemingly an experiment in physics, the piece has a cutesy appeal akin to WALL-E, as the robot and the ball playfully try to out-do each other in a sportive challenge.
Offline follows the journey of a small orange capacitor named ‘IZ’ that lives inside the circuit-board of a microwave oven. When the human operator blows out a circuit trying to zap everything from a large fish to a pig’s head in the oven, IZ embarks to fix the problem, and ends up leading the other circuits toward a revolution of freedom. The unique visuals and eye-catching effects help the piece stand out above the rest.
Heartstrings is easily the best animation of the bunch. Clocking in at just under three minutes long, it portrays the heartwarming story of two stop-motion characters made from string. They inevitably fall for each other, their love represented by a red string that squirms out of their chest, eventually tying them together. The adorable characters wordlessly display uncanny human emotions, symbolically representing the trials and tribulations of relationships as they fall in and out of love, only to find each other once again — an endearing cartoon approach that surprisingly strikes deep into the soul of human nature.
Despite the best of the bunch, ABP’s first program wasn’t without it’s awkward hiccups and dull yawns.
Haunted Heart plays out like a conversation between a Salvador Dali painting and a porno on peyote. As awesome as that might sound, it fails to materialize into anything more than confusing nonsense, overdoing the eccentricities and leaving most scratching their heads in bewilderment.
Patience of the Memory is a gorgeous but sleepy abstract montage that drags on far too long, struggling to hold attention. It surely takes a keen eye to actually distinguish it as the “watercolor history of Dresden” it is described as, and not just a murky aimless wandering.
These are but a few of the hits and misses that ABP’s first program has to offer. One incalculable advantage of the series is its ability to span such a wide array of genres and styles, assuring that anyone will find something to like in the collection.
