The London International Animation Festival - special Halloween screening

Event information

The London International Animation Festival (LIAF) presents a very special evening of dark, spooky animated films = especially for Halloween.
Please check out the LIAF website at www.liaf.org.uk for more details.

First up is the Japanese CALF collective at 7-30pm, followed at 9-30 by a special session of the darkest films submitted to LIAF from the 2,300 entries we have received this year. (Please note the 9-30 screening is a repeat screening of films screened at the Barbican on Monday 29th October).

7-30pm - THE CALF COLLECTIVE
The Calf Collective is a small group of young Japanese indie animators that decided to pool resources and take their work to the world under a single banner. It’s worked extremely well with CALF screenings of one kind or another in a vast array of festivals around the world in the last 18 months. And now it’s our turn to check out this group of Japanese indie animation trendsetters.

Films screening:
A clerk in charge
Atsushi Wada
Japan, 6’15, 2004
A clerk tests the quality of elephants before small birds carry them off around the world.

Well, that's glasses
Atsushi Wada,
Japan, 5’40, 2007
What happens when work, sleep, chemistry, and the human, animal, and dream worlds collide.

Consultation Room
Kei Oyama
Japan, 8’45, 2005
A lonely moment in a consultation room – the indications are not good. But the news isn’t made any better by turning it all into a macabre stage play.

Playground
Mirai Mizue
Japan, 3'50, 2011
A graceful collection of intricately created abstract creatures comes out to play.

The Thaw
Kei Oyama
Japan, 6’50, 2004
The slow journey towards thawing is part natural phenomena, part frightening inner battle.

Beluga
Shin Hashimoto
Japan, 6’10, 2011
A magnificently macabre, deliciously dark vision of the inner demons that race around the mind of a little match-seller condemned to the cold and dark.

Hand Soap
Kei Oyama
Japan, 15’50, 2008
Some moments take a lot more cleaning up after than others. Just as some moments are harder to explain than others.

Steps
Tochka
Japan, 2'00, 2010
An ingeniously simple idea brilliantly executed. The most fun you can have in a room with a few flashlights and some fake steps!

Modern No.2
Mirai Mizue
Japan, 4’14, 2011
An elegant, art-deco piece of rolling geometrical imagery from the master of the form.

The Undertaker and the Dog
Shin Hashimoto
Japan, 5’00, 2010
One day, an undertaker encounters a lowly pack of dogs. Without explanation he hands them his most valuable creation.

Green Fairy
Tochka
Japan, 2’10, 2010
Exquisite drawing with light – created for absinthe.

ReBuild
Tochka
Japan, 5’30, 2012
A reflection on the Tohoku earthquake and the tsunami of March 2011 – drawn with sunlight.

In A Pigs Eye
Atsushi Wada
Japan, 10’10, 2010
A delicate, surreal connection is made between a house sheltering all of mankind and a giant pig.

9-30pm: INTO THE DARK
The best of recently released short animated films from all over the world, carefully chosen from 2300-plus entries. They come in from every corner and use every technique. The one thing these 7 films have in common is that they are some of the creepiest, darkest films made in the last 18 months. Be scared, be very scared!

Underlife
Director: Jaroslaw Konopka
Poland, 8’32, 2010
The cyclical nature of existence combines with the past and the future to pursue the destructive influence that ancestors have on man.

Blanche Fraise
Director/Producer: Frederick Tremblay
Canada, 16’44, 2011
Two rabbits are starving to death in this sinister fairy tale in a dying forest.

How to raise the Moon
Director: Anja Struck
Germany/Denmark, 8’27, 2011
In a place of condensed time, sleep (a fox) and death (a bunny) fight for a woman’s life in this homage to early surrealistic silent cinema.

Coming of Oracle/Prohveti sund
Director: Rao Heidmets
Estonia, 13’00, 2011
Human beings are slaves to their imagination. To be free of it is a long and complicated journey which requires, above all, a good memory.

Black Doll/Prita Noire
Director: Sofia Carillo
Mexico, 8’10, 2011
Two sisters are bonded and bound by co-dependence, separation anxiety and routine in this creepy mix of time-lapse and puppetry.

Bydlo
Director: Patrick Bouchard
Canada, 8’55, 2012
Inspired by Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition - earth is brought to life through clay sculptures, creating a tactile nightmare in which man is his own slave driver.
http://www.nfb.ca

Plume
Director: Barry Purves
France, 14'40, 2011
A thrilling screening of Purves' latest masterpiece. A winged man, a fall, a hostile encounter, a life changed forever.