Festival Year: 2011
Heebie Jeebies Shorts
Flicker Lounge
Short Films Two
Short Films One
Boy
Using his own childhood hometown as a luscious backdrop, Oscar®-nominated director Taika Waititi delivers a delightfully playful, delicately poignant film that gracefully scales comedy and drama and is simply a joy to watch. It is 1984, Michael Jackson rules the airwaves, and eleven-year-old “Boy” lives with his kid brother and a slew of cousins in a small, dirt-poor community tucked away amongst the lazy beaches of rural New Zealand. Boy spends his days trying to impress crush Chardonnay with his “Thriller” dance moves and fantasizing about the day his father will come home from jail to take him on amazing adventures. When his father finally does return, it is not for familial bonding, but to dig up the bag of money he hid while running from the police and to set up in the garage with his gang of hapless hooligans. It isn’t long before Boy realizes that his father is not the combination war hero/deep sea diver/rugby captain that he imagined him to be — but a loutish, selfish buffoon whose opulent delusions are even more childish than his own. It is a coming of age story for both father and son.
Hammerhead
When a shark is spotted off a nearby beach, Boris seizes the opportunity to try to reunite his separated parents for a birthday road trip. But when the day arrives, he is disappointed to find that his biggest enemy is along for the ride — his mother’s new girlfriend, Lilah.
Leitmotif
Fluid, expressive animation and a great jazz soundtrack bring Triplets of Belleville immediately to mind, as a lonely old musician tickles the ivories with his cat on his lap.
Prayers for Peace
This poignant animated memoir reveals the final thoughts of the artist’s younger brother, who was killed in the current conflict in Iraq. Drawn with pastels on a slate chalkboard, the materials used to create the film are a metaphor for the impermanence of life.
Something Left, Something Taken
On their way to a forensics lecture, a young couple hitch a ride with a stranger who they slowly discover is none other than the Zodiac Killer — the infamous serial killer who has never been caught. As he veers off the highway to take a “shortcut” through the woods, they decide to leave evidence for the police. An award-winning dark comedy from the creators of last year’s Electric Car.
The Incident at Tower 37
A guard at a futuristic water tower intercepts a covert band of amphibian creatures trying to destroy the tower to rehydrate their planet.
The Lost Thing
A boy encounters a strange creature on a beach and decides to find a home for it in a world where everyone believes there are far more important things to think about. This beautifully animated film comes from Passion Pictures, producers of past NYICFF favorites City of Paradise and Dog Who Was a Cat Inside.
The Bellies
Fat capitalists dine on genetically altered snails in this nightmarish tales of gluttony and greed.
Echoes of the Rainbow
Winner of the Crystal Bear (youth audience award) at the Berlin Film Festival and Hong Kong’s official entry for this year’s Oscars®, Echoes of the Rainbow is a graceful and emotionally powerful tale based on the filmmaker’s real-life childhood. It’s the spring of 1969 and the world will have to wait another six months before Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon — but our young hero “Big Ears” is running through the streets of Hong Kong with a goldfish bowl on his head, Big brother Desmond (played wonderfully by Cantopop heartthrob, Aarif Lee) is a gold-medal track star and ace student who plays guitar and nurtures a nascent romance with soft-spoken cutie pie Flora. Meanwhile, their parents work their fingers to the bone running a tiny neighborhood shoe store. Their dream is simple: all they want is for their children to have a better life than they did — and this mood of nostalgic optimism and yearning is reflected perfectly by the sappy 60’s pop ballads wafting from big brother’s transistor radio. But the sunny tone soon darkens as the family is beset by a slumping economy, social unrest, and the onset of Hong Kong’s annual typhoons — presaging an even more wrenching family tragedy. This wonderful, bittersweet saga is almost epic in scale, evoking good times and bad times, love and loss, with sincerity, humor, and tenderness.
Bottle
This transoceanic love story, animated in stop motion on the beach, forest, and undersea, details a long distance friendship that blossoms between a sandman and a snowwoman who exchange gifts via a bottle in the water. But sand and snow cannot withstand water, so how can the two hope to be together?
Saari
Stunning colors, character design, and art direction show influences of Miró in this Spanish series about the creative adventures of a group of friends living together on the animated island Saari.
How to Lose Weight in 60 Seconds
From fad diets to stomach staples, a whirlwind minute road test of 12 approaches to weight loss. Do not try this at home.
Let’s Make Out
From the creator of last year’s Chicken Cowboy, a musical tribute to the innocent joys of smooching and booty-shaking.
Murphy’s Shorts
A chubby kid on a diving board keeps bouncing higher and higher, as sister, dad, and baby watch from below with growing anticipation and concern.
Marcel the Shell with the Shoes On
An up-close and personal interview with internet video star Marcel, a tiny shell with one eyeball, two shoes, and a really great personality!
Backwards
A love story so backwards, it has to be told in reverse.
Ormie
Pig see cookie. Pig want cookie. But the cookies are frustratingly out of reach in glass jar on top of the fridge, just beyond his grasp… or are they? With inventiveness and relentless determination, Ormie employs Wile E. Coyote-type contraptions and half-baked plans in a series of increasingly desperate attempts to attain the sweet objects of his obsession.
Book Girl and Cabinet Girl
A sweet and tender story of friendship, jealousy, and love. Book Girl and Cabinet Girl meet and become friends. But then Scissors Boy comes along and cuts them apart.
Precise Peter
An obsessive compulsive dad is excited about introducing his little boy to joys of al fresco dining. The fish is ready, the table is set, the sun is shining, all seems perfect — but junior can’t quite get with the program.
Savage
A woman sings a haunting Cree lullaby as we see a young girl preparing to attend a new school. But as we enter the classroom the film morphs into a Thriller-style zombie musical — in this moving short about the plight of Native American children separated from their parents and sent to residential schools to “take the Indian” out of them.
The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger
The latest film from NYICFF’s favorite hometown hero, Bill Plympton is a factory farming fable about the power of advertising, the meaning of life, and ultimately the test of a mother’s love.
Benigni
A lonesome xylophone player discovers a fleshy lump growing under his arm. But when he attempts to remove it, the tumor displays some unconventional qualities.
Tigers and Tattoos
Maj lives with her uncle Sonny and loves to sit with him when he “draws” on the tough women and hard-boiled men who frequent his tattoo shop. One day, a particularly large and scary customer dozes off and Maj ends up tattooing all over his huge back with her childish designs. Fearing the man’s rage, Sonny and Maj make a hasty escape on Sonny’s motorcycle — the start of an exciting adventure where they discover a magic forest filled with fairies and sprites, a circus mother and her son, and a man-eating tiger named Brutalis.
A Cat in Paris
NYICFF is thrilled to present the US Premiere of the brilliant new feature from Folimage, the animation studio behind Mia & the Migoo and Raining Cats and Frogs. A Cat in Paris is a beautifully hand-drawn caper set in the shadow-drenched alleyways of Paris. Dino is a pet cat that leads a double life. By day he lives with Zoe, a little mute girl whose mother, Jeanne, is a detective in the Parisian police force. But at night he sneaks out the window to work with Nico — a slinky cat-burglar with a big heart, whose fluid movements are poetry in motion — as he evades captors and slips and swishes from rooftop to rooftop across the Paris skyline. The cat’s two worlds collide when young Zoe decides to follow Dino on his nocturnal adventures — and falls into the hands of Victor Costa, a blustery gangster planning the theft of a rare statue. Now cat and cat burglar must team up to save Zoe from the bumbling thieves, leading to a thrilling acrobatic finale on top of Notre Dame. A Cat in Paris is a warm and richly humorous love letter to classic noir films and the stylized wit of the Pink Panther cartoons — and Dino, the literal cat burglar, manages to steal the show with little more than a subtle swish of the tail and quiet mew.
The Storytelling Show
Don’t miss the hilarious new comedy from the producers of Kirikou and the Sorceress, The Triplets of Belleville and The Secret of Kells. Laurent is so good at telling bedtime stories that his kids decide to enter him in a reality-show TV contest, where the competing dads are given cues and have to invent a bedtime story on the spot. Who will tell the best story? Will it be the music loving dad? The know-it-all professor? The dad with severe anger management issues? Or will it be Eric, Laurent’s manipulative. lying, cheating co-worker, who will stop at nothing to see Laurent fail? The deceptively simple animation clears space for rapid fire joking and visual humor — as the scene shifts back and forth between the studio sound stage and the fathers’ imagined stories, where princesses ride dolphins and prehistoric cavemen sing operettas — riffing on everything from Harry Potter to Mick Jagger along the way. Inspired by the director’s own childhood memories, The Storytelling Show is a raucous tribute to the joys of imagination and the limitless possibilities of a good story.