At the Professional Films Selection I saw one of my favourites short films, “Post!”, directed by Matthias Bruhn and Christian Asmussen, from Germany. It tells the story of a postman who delivers post written by him instead of the letters he’s given by the post service. These made-up missives make the addressees unavoidably laugh, until a day arrives in which the post office decides to act…
“Post!” is mainly made in 2D traditional animation though it also has some 3D effect. What I liked the most about it was its sense of humour, perfectly conveyed though its lack of dialogue. The characters design is very simple but effective, making it easy to capture their personalities. The absence of dialogue is compensated for by the use of many sound effects and the expressiveness of the drawings. I think this short film is a good example of how communication can be achieved without words. In this case, a humorous story is perfectly supported by a sound-effects-only soundtrack, in which the postman’s whistled friendly tune becomes essential at the end as it is used by the villagers to show their gratitude towards him.


“Skhizein”, by the French director Jeremy Clapin, was also screened at the Professional Films Selections. The plot was based on what I thought to be a very original idea, a young man that lives 91cms from himself as a consequence of having been struck by a meteorite. He is thus forced to trace guide lines at his home and workspace to know where he is standing at all times. Besides liking the story I also enjoyed the imagery style and the general colour, a grey-scale with a brown-greenish touch, and some funny situations caused by the protagonist’s peculiar condition.

A film by Ivana Sebestova, from Slovakia, left me a disappointed feeling the first time I saw it, but when I watched this selection for the second time on my third day at BAF my opinion about it improved a little.
“Four” tells the story of four women who turn up to be involved in a tragic aviation accident. The first viewing made me kind of realize that the cut-out technique isn’t as cold as I thought and that it also allows smooth and expressive movements, like Hanna’s legs relaxing while she rides her bicycle, or the detail of Lilith’s hair locks waving independently. I also liked the way the figures were coloured, giving them an effective volume sensation.

What made me feel a bit disappointed was the end of the story, since I was expecting it to come to a sudden turn or to unveil something new. But then that came after watching it for the second time. First, I found some details that I hadn’t noticed the first time, like the fact that we couldn’t see that Lilith was pregnant until the artist wanted us to, since her stomach was always somehow covered. And secondly, talking about the story with some classmates they made me become aware of the fact that the characters names hadn’t been chosen at random: Lilith, in the Jewish mythology, is considered to be the first wife of Adam, previous to Eve. In the short film, Lilith finds out that her lover Adam has an affair with a girl called Eve.


Finally, the 3D animation "Varmints", by the Briton Marc Craste, which has been awarded the Grand Prize for Best Film and the Audience Award for Best Film in this year's Festival. It is a technically very well accomplished short film, though a little slow-paced, about the life of a varmint, a kind of mouse-looking creature, in a suffocating city.
It's based on a children's book with an ecological leitmotif, written by Helen Ward and illustrated by Marc Craste, member of Studio aka.
Now that I'm living in Wales for a year it's a good opportunity to have a closer look into the UK animation industry, and I'm glad to observe its constant presence in TV, especially in advertisements. Spanish television doesn’t show as many animated adverts as the British does, which is a shame. Here I’ve seen many of them and they are very good indeed.
An example could be the Lloyds TSB adverts series by the Studio aka.