Cinema 21 to host annual festival with 16 films Nov. 18-24
For the past 18 years, The Animation Show of Shows has highlighted the best in animated short films.
Cinema 21, 616 N.W. 21st Ave., will present the latest slew of animated flicks to Portland, which runs from Friday to Thursday, Nov. 18-24. Showtimes are 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. daily, as well as 1:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
This years festival features 16 animated short films featuring techniques ranging from hand-drawn to stop-motion to cutting-edge computer-generated imagery.
Founded and curated by Ron Diamond, Show of Shows has been presenting innovative short films to animation studios, societies, schools and festivals around the world. Over the years, 32 of the films showcased in the Show of Shows went on to receive Academy Award nominations, with nine films winning an Oscar. Until last year, however, organizers say only a relatively small number of people, primarily working in animation, could see these movies in a theater. So, in 2015, the showcase was expanded to include public screenings in cities around the world.
The 16 films in this years program were created by animators from Belgium, Canada, France, Israel, Korea, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Scotland, the U.K., and the U.S. Their themes range from gay issues and civil rights, to personal stories, to wacky humor. Many of the flicks already have garnered awards from festivals around the world, and this years show also includes an expanded selection of student films from leading animation schools in the United States, Belgium, Canada, Korea and Russia.
In addition to the evening shows, there will be daytime screenings of 12 films from the program, which are specifically designed to be family-friendly and appropriate for viewers 6 and older. An intermission will allow families with young children to leave before the final four adult-themed movies are shown.
Highlights of the matinees include About a Mother, a new folktale with echoes of Shel Silversteins The Giving Tree,; Disney-Pixars Piper, and the father-and-daughter-journey Pearl by Academy Award winner Patrick Osborne.
The shorts for mature audiences include Corpus, which features a bizarre chain reaction between inanimate objects and human body parts; an exploration of the pain and pleasure of love in Blue; a brief and rapid descent into the depths of depravity in Manoman, and All Their Shades, a gently satirical paean to the wonders of the female gender.
Other movies to be shown include the following:
Stems by Ainslie Hendersen
Shift by Cecilia Puglesi & Yijun Liu
Crin-Crin by Iris Alexandre
Mirror by Chris Ware, John Kuramoto and Ira Glass
Last Summer in the Garden by Bekky ONeil
Waiting for New Year by Vladimir Leschiov
Boygen by Kristian Pedersen
Afternoon Class by Seoro Oh
Exploozy by Joshua Gunn, Trevor Piecham and John McGowan
Blue by Daniela Sherer
For more information, visit www.AnimationShowofShows.com or www.cinema21.com.