Director – Wiebe Bonnema – 2019 – Netherlands – 4m 36s
*****
From the Annecy 2020 Online Animation Festival
I had to blink while I was watching this. Its opening two minutes play out like the animated title sequence of a spaghetti Western, and if you’ve seen a few of those you’ll know that a number sport superb 2D animation titles which this little short so brilliantly pastiches. This goes further in a way, simultaneously playing with genre clichés while depicting a gunfighter saving a town from despots. As he passes through, white squares standing for people’s windows wipe onto the screen.
This opening cleverly gets around one of the inherent problems with the short animated (or for that matter non-animated) film, the necessity for credits. Usually, these are boringly placed at the end as white titles creeping up the screen over a black background. But having got all that out of the way in his opening, which incidentally functions as the perfect calling card for selling himself as a maker of amazing titles sequences, Wiebe has space to explore what happens after the generic story is over. What happens after the hero rides off into the sunset?
The graphic genius already exhibited continues in what follows: a long, slow, single shot horse ride away from camera into the distance. Only it’s not one shot but serial montaged images in different light (and dark) conditions, an indication of the changing environment during the passage of time, a feast of a colour pallette for the eye. And an ending which, whie we won’t reveal it here, benefits from the fact that the film can stop at its end without the need for any additional titles. When it reaches the end and stops, that really is the end. Where it stops.
The End plays in the Annecy Animation Festival which is taking place in a special online edition this year right now. It can be found in the Graduation Films 2 programme. Trailer here:
and the Festival’s interview with the director here:
Festivals
2020
Annecy Animation Festival special online edition:
Monday, June 15th to Tuesday, June 30th.
Festival trailer: