Welcome to Kentucky

The main protagonist of this short, surreal film is a man obsessed with control. In an automated world drained of all emotion, he is tortured by vague longings. Will he be able to transcend his obsessions and fears?

In this animated short, an aging bachelor is facing yet another lonely, rain-sodden Saturday. His psyche is shot, neurosis is setting in, and he's reached the end of his little black book. If he has any hopes of breaking his cycle of failure, he must first deal with his two alter egos, both intent on orchestrating his failure.

This short animation is bleak and apparently grim, but it is an assertive statement on self-determination and the fundamental need for both dark and light. This is the first professional film by Jo Meuris.

Produced as part of the first edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship. Theme was "Water and Our Relationship to It".

This is a combination of stop-motion puppet and drawn animation. We observe a forlorn woman on a Halifax dock, whose loneliness is lifted by the passing of a fishing trawler. A metaphor on the connectiveness of water and water's capacity as a medium of freedom.

Produced as part of the first edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship. Theme was "Water and Our Relationship to It".

This particular love song is an ironic, oftentimes caustic, commentary on the terror and pain of love, from a child's desperate attempts at closeness with his parents to an adult's relationship with a cruel and isolating world. Animated boldly with a paint brush and black ink, the action, like a continual dance, throbs to the rhythms of a five-string banjo. Shapes change, are metamorphosed, in an emotional roller-coaster trip through the subconscious.

A particularly creative example of the pinscreen animation technique, this film is about an artist who steps inside his painting and wanders about in a landscape peopled with symbols that trigger unexpected associations. Film without words.

In this autobiographical animated short, Elise Simard crafts the story of a young girl seeking self-discovery and rebirth. Drifting between real and imagined events, the film uses time-lapse photography with ink and pastels, creating a haunting, compassionate exploration of addiction and existence.

Mamori transports us into a black-and-white universe of fluid shapes, dappled and striated with shadows and light, where the texture of the visuals and of the celluloid itself have been transformed through the filmmaker’s artistry. The raw material of images and sounds was captured in the Amazon rainforest by filmmaker Karl Lemieux and avant-garde composer Francisco López, a specialist in field recordings. Re-filming the photographs on 16 mm stock, then developing the film stock itself and digitally editing the whole, Lemieux transmutes the raw images and accompanying sounds into an intense sensory experience at the outer limits of representation and abstraction. Fragmented musical phrases filter through the soundtrack, evoking in our imagination the clamour of the tropical rainforest in this remote Amazonian location called Mamori.

Exploring the conscious, the unconscious and the self, By Winds and Tides takes a deep experimental dive into the birth of an idea—how it takes shape, how it is released. An allegorical quest, the film combines images and words into a singular sigh. A film from the Alambic collection, a creative lab by the NFB’s French Program Animation Studio that’s designed for emerging filmmakers.

Two drinking buddies sit in a beer-induced stupor, idly dreaming of a tropical paradise. Ironically, that paradise is just outside their dilapidated shack. This computer-animated film shows that our inability to fully enjoy our environment often stems from our attitudes towards life. Film without words.

A man wakes in a sea of sand dunes. He clutches a metal suitcase as if it holds something of great value. In the distance looms a distorted and inhuman city from which the man has apparently fled. An experiment in science-fiction/mystery, Flee wonders how many possible histories and possible futures can be implied in a single minute.

Produced as part of the 8th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.