As part of the National Film Board’s Get Animated! festival, the Winnipeg Film Group has assembled a collection of recent work by students in the Red River College Digital Arts Program, the Communication Multimedia Program at Collège St. Boniface and several fresh pieces from individual Winnipeg animators as well.

There is a little something for every animation fan in the mix, from highly experimental ultra-shorts like Zeb to sweet and playful tales of brotherly love like Frères, all of them worthy of an NFB commercial break.

Art City’s contribution, a compilation of stop-motion animation and claymation, is like the organization itself: frenetic, colourful and full of youthful energy.

Mark Klassen’s film Blind Date is amongst the number of pieces presented here which are utterly remarkable in their own right.

In particular, Klassen’s Blind Date is the definite highlight of the festival. The story of an extraterrestrial courtship gone sour, it combines the juiciest bits of UFO movie convention with good old romantic humiliation, making a film that is equally inventive and humorous.

Klassen’s jagged, colourful animation, as well as his surreal soundtrack, make the film an exceptional piece of work.

In another great little film, Curtis Wiebe’s The Devil Wears a Paper Hat, a tale of prairie fabulism is presented - appropriate viewing as autumn settles in on Winnipeg. Devil is a largely live-action story of a girl lost on the side of the road and her woodland encounters with a shape-shifting gunslinger and a strange roaming tree-man. It’s a fantastically imaginative and playful film, which mixes Spaghetti Western sensibilities with the fairy tale genre.

Wiebe does everything from direct and write the film to providing its soundtrack, and the product of his painstaking efforts is impressive.

The last real stand-out is Brenna George’s Allsorts, a trippy ride through Grandma’s crystal candy dish that leaves you feeling high and perhaps a little hungry as well.

Published in Volume 64, Number 9 of The Uniter (October 29, 2009)