Austria 2009, 6 min, BetaSP
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editing/Producer: Reinhold Bidner | Sound Design: Richard Eigner
A look, an expression, a scream, pain and joy. Captured with the brushes and viewed through the eyes of great masters. Reinhold Bidner packs the entire history of art into five minutes and finds a way of bringing the venerable and “dusty” paintings back into this world – away from the dead framework of the museums and into a morphed digital present.

Germany 2009, 3 min, 35 mm
Director/Screenwriter/Editing: Gil Alkabetz | Cinematographer: Nurit Israeli | Production: Gil Alkabetz, Sweet Home Studio
Although the title might lead one to expect something else, The Da Vinci Time Code by Gil Alkabetz is exemplary for an avant-garde approach to animated films in which – contrary to a cinematographic tradition –the artistic picture and, in this case, its spatio-temporal reorganisation gains centre stage, and with an entertaining manner to boot.

Estonia 2009, 9 min, 35 mm
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Editing: Martinus Klemet | Producer: Kalev Tamm | Music: Vaiko Eplik
Television broadens the mind. Sometimes. Martinus Klemet shows us a very oppressive and literally striking concept of the manipulation of humans and animals by the way of audio-visual media. The pictures have direct influence over our behaviour, whereby the minimal black and white visuals make for an extremely surreal atmosphere.

Germany 2009, 5 min, HD
Director/Screenwriter/Editing: Martin Sulzer | Cinematographer: Andreas Hartmann
The body surface sums up emotional states: Martin Sulzer’s “Dance Performance Video” is one of four gloomy clips made for the Berlin duo “Tannhäuser Sterben & das Tod” and is quite disturbing with its hunched (dancing?) body in front of a black background. Twitching shoulder blades, a protruding spine – the naked man as a primeval creature.

Belgium 2009, 14 min, Digital, 35 mm
Director/Screenwriter/Editor/Sound/Producer: Nicolas Provost | Assistant Editor: Nathalie Cools
A deconstruction of the body and of digital film images: Nicolas Provost devotes himself to genre films and deals with popular motives from „body-horror“ films. Rearranging and resolving the original pictures opens up a whole new horror-spectrum that leaves the audience with a thrill of pixels.

France 2009, 4 min, DigiBeta
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer/Producer: Fred Joyeux | Editing: Hugo Béron | Music: Jérémie Morizeau | Voice over: Nora Maindon, Fred Joyeux
The situation of continuous physical pain, in this case caused by attacks of migraine, is brought to us in an extremely sober drawing, which is orientated on live-action films. The pain enables the protagonist to experience “sensational sensations”, as the artist of animations, Fred Joyeux, describes it. But the depiction is hard to bear.

UK 2009, 3 min
Director: Andy Glynne | Animation Director: Katerina Athanasopoulou | Music: Alex Parsons | Voices: Nicole, Abigail, Lois
While several girls recount how they cause injuries to their own bodies, Andy Glynne’s pictures attempt to approach this physical pain. His series “Animated Minds” deals with people who confront themselves with their mental disorders, and thereby offers an example of how convincingly the animated form can close the gaps in documentary films.

France/UK/Germany 2010, 4 min, HD
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer: Max Hattler | Producer: Nicolas Schmerkin | Editors: Max Hattler, Tony Fish | Music: Eclectic
Max Hattler is always on the go. From performances and classic animations to music videos he scores new coups in the shortest space of time. This one, an abstract musical of toy soldiers, is full of black humour, deployment and the absurdity of media, war and sovereignty. “Ironising” by aestheticising, this is a direct hit.

Belgium 2008, 9 min, Digital, BetaSP, 35 mm
Director/Screenwriter/Editor: Mathieu Labaye | Cinematographers: Mathieu Labaye, Sébastien Godard | Producer: Jean-Luc Slock | Cast: Benoît Labaye | Music: Fabian Fiorini, Mathieu Labaye
Movement starts in the mind. Mathieu Labaye’s three-part work is something of a textbook example for this: she wakes up, animates lifeless things, creates worlds that don’t really exist – she is transformation and metamorphosis. The film deals with a social topic with mathematical precision, until at the end all that remains is dance, supposedly the quintessential form of movement.

Israel 2009, 4 min
Directors: Yuval & Merav Nathan, Oren Lavie | Producer: Michal Dayan | Photography: Eyal Landesman | Animation: Yuval Nathan | Assistant Animators: Guy Ben Shitrit, Tamar Nathan | Actress: Shir Shomron
Israeli artist Oren Lavie has created a tender and dreamy video for his own piece of music that makes fantasy dance in bed. But the stop-motion clip is not just notoriously romantic, it is also made with extraordinary precision. The 3.225 images, photographed from the ceiling, have inspired over 20 million clicks at various video sharing websites.

USA 2007–2009, 4 min
Director: Signe Baumane
Teat Beat of Sex – 1 Explicitly educational. Signe Baumane doesn’t mince words when it comes to sexual experiences. In this first episode of a ten part series she gets to the bottom of the question of the size of the male sex organ without inhibition and in a very direct yet also extremely informative and entertaining manner. “Women are as sex obsessed as men, so let’s hear what they have to spill!”
Teat Beat of Sex – 2 Cynthia, effectively the alter ego of Lithuanian-American artist Signe Baumane, embarks into a new episode of the slightly different kind of educational TV. Be it orgasm, first kiss or oral sex, the woman’s point of view is sought. This time she explains why women should ware panties at all times. “Short, intense and leaving you wanting more” – what else?!

Belgium 2008, 4 min, BetaSP
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer: Monica Gallab | Editor: Lova Randrianasolo | Producer: Vincent Gilot | Original music (sound): Deborah Dourneau
The life of a man in today’s world: work, meetings, running over hot coals, impressing women, ripping off one’s clothes and being peeled. In Monica Gallab’s surreal short film these procedures are attached to one another in bizarre loops, yet the individual scenes never seem totally absurd. At the end is the pipe-dream of a beautiful day – picnic included, of course.

Germany 2009, 7 min, DigiBeta, HD
Creation/Design/Animation/Director: Andreas Hykade | Animation Assistance: Angela Steffen, Natalia Eck, Anselm Pyta | Compositing: Christof Hoffmann | Sound: Heiko Maile | Production: Thomas Meyer-Hermann | Production Assistance: Simone Fischer
This is the first time that Andreas Hykade, from the Stuttgart animation studio „Film Bilder“, doesn’t devote himself to autobiographical material – instead he kind of experimentally examines the stylistics of cartoons. The most diverse “characters” of the history of animated cinema and his own pen become interwoven in a musical iconoclasm. Unique.