PMA Films: Animation Show of Shows returns
PMA Films Specialist Chris Gray dives into our upcoming screenings for November 25-December 4
The 22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows
Returning to theaters after a two-year, pandemic-induced hiatus, the 22nd installment of the Animation Show of Shows is a rich and lovingly curated sampler of animated shorts from around the world. This program is often the first stop for short films that find themselves on your annual Academy Award nominated shorts ballots, and this year’s offerings boast a number of standout candidates. The four-minute “Beyond Noh,” by Patrick Smith and Kaori Ishida, is a blitz through the history of the mask, ranging from Japanese Noh masks to tribal ritual masks to modern Halloween masks; precisely framed and photographed, the images seem to perform a dance of their own. Geoffroy de Crécy’s “Empty Places” is one of a couple of shorts that, incidentally or not, speak to our collective experience over the past few years. In this case, a Leftovers-style rapture appears to have occurred, leaving the world populated by machines that continue to run, as if unbothered by a wildly different planet.
My two favorite films come right in the middle of the program. “Zoizoglyphe” is a debut film by the French animator Jeanne Apergis, constructed from minimalist hand-drawn birds that look a lot like musical notes. They arrange in increasingly complex patterns, and the film’s soundtrack grows more elaborate along with them. The comedic highlight of this Animation Show of Shows is “Rain (Deszcz),” Piotr Milczarek’s darkly hilarious short about an unlikely series of events that transpires on the roof of a humdrum office complex. The final half hour of the program is devoted to a 4K restoration of the 1987 Oscar winner by Frederick Back, The Man Who Planted Trees. Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the fable-like film is a stirring ecological tale with an open-ended sense of style and composition.
Screening Times & Tickets:
Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning
The final film in our series inspired by the ongoing exhibition “Presence” is Dyanna Taylor’s deeply personal 2014 exploration of her grandmother, the great photographer Dorothea Lange. Framed around Lange’s preparations for a MoMA retrospective, Taylor captures the remarkable sweep of Lange’s chronicles of recent American history and examines the impulse to live a creative lifestyle.
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Aftersun
As we enter the holiday season and the official start of the annual churn of ten-best lists and awards nominations, I’ve seen dozens of good-to-great films from 2022, but I’ve been waiting for that one movie to come along that just grabs my head and heart and doesn’t let go. I may have found it in Aftersun, the innovative and incredibly moving debut feature by the Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells. Largely set at a somewhat ramshackle Turkish resort in the 1990s, the film examines the bond between Calum (the extraordinary Paul Mescal, who I would tip as a surprise Best Actor nominee at next year’s Oscars) and his daughter, 11 year-old Sophie (a poised and perfect Frankie Corio). Sophie lives with her mother and stepfather in England, and it’s evident early on that this Turkish vacation is part of a somewhat strained effort on Calum’s part to relay his love for his daughter.
Wells captures the oscillations of this father-daughter relationship with great precision, homing in on moments of both easy chemistry and awkwardness. At times, Calum and Sophie seem like they’re just friends (they’re often mistaken for siblings), but as the film evolves a sense that there’s a lot they can’t or won’t tell each other looms large. Aftersun draws this out with exquisite delicacy, and Wells complicates this dynamic further by framing her film as a memory piece, punctuated by flashes into the future and scenes shot with era-appropriate digital video. Something about the elegance with which Wells reveals her gambit and then sends it to unexpected places is frankly devastating. It’s the only recent drama I can think of that’s both emotionally acute and utilizing the tools of cinema to say something new.
Screening Times & Tickets:
5B (Free World AIDS Day screening with Frannie Peabody Center)
This 2019 documentary tells the story of the nurses and caregivers who established the country's first HIV/AIDS ward, at San Francisco General Hospital in 1983. This screening will culminate in a panel discussion, and we are grateful to Frannie Peabody Center for making this event free and open to the public.