An Animated Holiday

Comments (0) By Silke Tudor Wednesday, Dec 24 2008

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In Geoff Adams’ short film Birdbeat: fugue, a group of cheeky little songbirds is intimidated throughout their meal by a big, overbearing blackbird. If this sounds a little too much like holidays at home, shake it off at the Holiday Animation Festival. Fetch!, by Sita Sings the Blues director Nina Paley, is the story of “a man, a dog, and a ball who lose their perspective” at home, at sea, and in Escher-like labyrinths — all set to the gleeful strains of the Sprocket Ensemble. PES’ Western Spaghetti is a stop-motion cooking demonstration that turns bubble wrap into boiling water and red velvet into creamy marinara (the epicurean short has been scheduled for Sundance after being named this year’s number two viral video by Time). White Out is a mesmerizing flume of 2,200 watercolors painted by experimental filmmaker Jeff Scher, and Sour Death Balls is the first animation piece by Jessica Yu. While Yu is beloved for her gorgeous, dreamlike documentary of outsider artist Henry Darger and her Academy Award-winning short about Berkeley journalist and poet Mark O’Brien, Sour Death Balls is a little more like her feature about Ping Pong, Ping Pong Playa, only with really, really sour balls of candy.
Dec. 26-28, 12 & 2 p.m., 2008