Melting Animals is a family-friendly selection of animated short films aimed at children and young people. Featuring handmade and digital animation from around the world, this virtual program at MAG will inspire younger audiences through the mind-expanding experience of cinema. This is your invitation to explore the magic of the natural world using everyday objects, rhythms, and textures. Melting Animals is a creative tool that offers a variety of simple techniques that we hope will motivate you to experiment at home.
Films Included in Program 2
LINEAR DREAMS
Richard Reeves | Canada | 7:00 | 1997
Color | Sound | transferred from 16mm
“The sound of a heartbeat pumps life into ‘Linear Dreams’, a scratch animation film that moves from the simple lines of the unconscious to representational realism.” – Toronto International Film Festival, 1997
Courtesy of the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre.
THE ANIMAL MOVIE
Grant Munro & Ron Tunis | Canada | 9:49 | 1966
Color | Sound | transferred from 16mm
An animated cartoon to help children explore why and how animals move as they do. A little boy discovers that he cannot compete with a monkey, a snake or a horse by imitating the way they move. He can only outdistance them when he climbs into a vehicle that can travel in any environment, proving that the human capacity for technological invention creates a wholly different relationship to our environment.
Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada.
BEAD GAME
Ishu Patel | Canada | 5:00 | 1977
Color | Sound | transferred from 16mm
In this animated short, thousands of beads are arranged and manipulated, assuming shapes of creatures both mythical and real. They continually devour, merge, and absorb one another in explosions of color.
Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada.
AUGUST SONG
Jodie Mack and Emily Kuehn in collaboration with Roommate | USA | 5:45 | 2011
Color | Sound | transferred from 16mm
A kaleidoscopic magic carpet ride of a cat through an overflowing universe of color, textures, and movement. Combining formal elements from abstract animation with structural film, Mack’s handmade films use collage techniques to liberate the kinetic energy of recycled and domestic materials to explore the relationship between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced graphic design.
Courtesy of the Artist.
SET IN MOTION
Jane Aaron | Music: Donald Fagen
USA | 4:00 | 1986
Color | Sound | transferred from 16mm
Filmed in Aaron’s home studio on Reade Street in Tribeca. A rhythmic free-flowing vision of captured moments from daily life culminates in a visual punch line… the overwhelming accumulation of clutter from the day (and from making this movie).
Courtesy of ExperimentalAnimationsbyJaneAaron.vhx.tv
Thank you to the Art Bridges Foundation for their funding of this educational outreach program. The Memorial Art Gallery is extremely grateful for the National Film Board of Canada’s generous in-kind support.
