As I wrote several posts before, last February I attended the Ffresh Image Festival for one day, the last one. It was a great opportunity not just to see animation films but to enjoy motion graphics and live-action productions. The screenings and presentations had irregular qualities. I loved many of them but found others pretty boring.

“Elephants”, by Sally Pearce, was the first one I saw and delighted me, by combining live-action with a tender animated family of elephants living in the house of the protagonist girl and her grey parents.

I was really moved by the live-action short film by Liz Davies and Craig Haywood “Pila Pala”, about a little girl and her relationship with her father short after having lost their mother and wife respectively.


From the animated short films I really liked two Korean productions: “Walking in the Rainy Day”, by Choi Hyun-Myeong, and “The Mouse Trap”, by Han Woon. Their atmospheres were very different: “Walking in the Rainy Day” was a light nice anecdote about a girl whose umbrella’s broken and who plays with a frog on her way home. Its technique was really nice, consisting in black ink lines and grey-scale shading, and it reminded me of Naoki Urasawa’s “Yawara!” drawing style.

“The Mouse Trap” story and style was darker, and its humanoid mouse characters were really well accomplished. The colouring was very soft and dull and the camera movements were impressive.

Finally, a very sensitive live-action short film presented as the narrated memories of a divorced couple. They just talk to the camera, while sitting on a sofa, but the shots, showing them always separately, their words, their interpretations and pauses, everything flows perfectly and perfectly conveys the characters’ feelings. The short film’s name is “Halb” (Half) and its creator is Rabea Gorny, from Germany. The film can be seen here.