by Wanda Waterman

The Voice, Volume 22 Issue 44 2014-11-07

Film: Eight Animazing Short Stories

“Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.”
– B.R. Hayden

These international animated shorts, winners of the first ever AniMazing Spotlight competition, have some common elements. There’s no dialogue in any of them, for one thing, which makes them watchable in any country, and the themes are universal.

The films were judged for uniqueness, quality of narrative, character, animation, ingenuity, sound, and, yes, the message. The judges are from all over the world and come from very different backgrounds, and yet a commonality emerges. There’s a preoccupation with death and love in these films. Animation makes the reality of death pill easier to swallow and takes the edge off the pain of love.

It’s the “fun” factor in cartoons that enables them to deliver difficult truths . . . (Read the rest here)