The Shorts at the fest

I went and saw the Flank Shorts on Thursday. They were well made. There was one film in particular I found myself loving and hating at the same time. It was a German film called "Exploding Buds". It was really experimental and proved my theory that all German people are insane. They created a fake forest with triangular pieces of paper as leaves. There was some stop motion as well, which was really cool. I can't begin to describe the plot (there is one but its indescribable). But the stop motion has black ink crawl up one of the characters bodies. Then a girl holds his hand and it crawls up her body as well. Having done some stop motion now I really liked it. The end is insane. You've been in this wild pretend world where there is nothing natural, where everything is wrong from the looks to the actions of the characters. In the end the two "protagonists"(if you could call them that) are ripped from that world and left naked in a real forest. The juxtaposition literally makes your head spin, you realize how detailed nature really is and how much more beautiful it is that anything we could ever create (wow that sounded alot corny than I meant it to). The experiance of watching a series of shorts is pretty cool. I like the idea of 5 films with nothing in common being shown back to back. The films ranged from the weird german one to a sweet story of a father and daughter, to a strange out of time western, and finally to a break up story. Each had unique visual styles and I'm glad I checked em out. I also went and saw the hottest state. It was preceded by an one minute short. This short was really kinda cool. It was hand manipulated film. Animation drawn on the film (I think). Having worked with that I thought it was great. The sound effects were spot on, I found myself laughing at parts and there wasn't even a joke (what is wrong with me?). I'm gonna try to check out more but I might not get the chance. Hopefully though. Great festival. worth the out of state tuition. (Maybe).