Fantasmagorie

If you haven't seen this - WATCH IT!

It is the first animation film, made in 1908 by Emile Cohl. It contains a number of sequences of things metamorphisising into other things, and is very funny and entertaining. Just like Melies', 'A trip to the moon', I think anyone should be able to watch it and be entertained, and if not entertained, I would hope that they can at least appreciated it for what it is. The founding of animation as we know it today. An animation 100 years old should be enough to entice any viewer. It really is a wonderful experience to see this film.

Birthday Boy

'Birthday Boy' is an animation by Sejong Park. This is the only animation of the animation program I am writing about, because I thought it was the best one. We see Manuk in the streets of his homeland Korea, dreaming about his father on the war front, and playing around. When he gets home he finds a parcel which he thinks is a birthday present from his father, but it is from the military, containing his fathers belongings -he has been killed in action.

The animation in this film is really different, and it was nice to see something unusual in an animation. I thought it looked really cool, one of my favourite scenes visually is where Manuk is at the temple that a plane has crashed through. Manuk has so much energy and life and this enhanced the film, as well as the emotions associated with war related films. I felt great sadness at the realisation of the fathers death, imagining what it would have been like. The contents of the parcel were touching.

I found this to be a really good short film.