International Competition Block 1 - SEAF 2023
Saturday, October 19, 2024 - 4:00 PM - MICA Falvey Hall Theatre
Saturday, October 19, 2024 - 7:00 PM - Towson University Van Bokkelen Hall Theatre
Runtime = 80 minutes
Q&A with animators in attendance after the screening
Go to this Eventbrite Ticket Link
On the Eventbrite site - Select Saturday, October 19 for your chosen date. Then click the orange tickets button and find this specific event to reserve a seat for this screening either at MICA or Towson.
$12 for individual tickets / $80 for all-access festival pass (gets you into all screenings/events of the festival)
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International Competition Block 1 features jaw-dropping animated short films from 7 countries. Dancing the tango, trying to reconnect online, bald men, fairy rave, censorship, water on the window, greek myth escapism, pinscreen language, a caged bird, searching in the dark, Mickey remixed, enter the ear, kissing is gross!
LOCA
Director - Véronique Paquette
Country - Canada
Time - 5:00
A woman loses herself in an exhilarating tango that transforms her.
Missed Connections
Director - Jack Gray
Country - United States
Time - 5:03
'Missed Connections' is an online forum where anyone can post their story, in hopes of reconnecting with someone they shared a passing moment with. The film presents several vignettes taken from the forum, exploring these humorous, vulnerable and surreal aspects of pursuing romance in a contemporary city.
Beautiful Men
Director - Nicolas Keppens
Country - Belgium
Time - 18:35
Three balding brothers travel to Istanbul to get a hair transplant. Stuck with each other in a hotel far from home, their insecurities grow faster than their hair.
Magic Buzz
Director - Julia Müller
Country - Germany
Time - 1:00
The vibrations of an abandoned phone in the woods set off a tiny fairy-rave.
Speak No Evil
Director - Chen Ma
Country - United Kingdom
Time - 4:16
 In this world of silence, there are three types of people. A dark character who possesses a golden mouth, green characters with fly swatters and little white characters who take care of the captured mouths. From day and night countless mouths were disposed into a black hole, how will the little white character respond to this? Will it start to defend its own mouth or will it keep silent? 
Born Days - How to Disappear
Director - Louis Morton
Country - United States
Time - 3:55
Falling rain on a window transforms into scenes of fleeting thoughts and loosely grasped memories. This music video was inspired by long walks along Lake Michigan and dark rainy winter nights in the Midwest, U.S.A.
A Crab in the Pool
Director - Alexandra Myotte & Jean-Sébastien Hamel
Country - Canada
Time - 11:11
In a run-down neighborhood, Zoe and her little brother Theo are left to fend for themselves. A young adolescent, Zoe is a ball of anger haunted by an intimate terror. Theo, still a child, flees reality into a fantastical world. During a scorching summer day, the two children will have to burst the abscess of their relationship so as not to lose each other. 
Contradiction of Emptiness
Director - Irina Rubina
Country - Germany
Time - 3:06
The language in which lullabies were sung to me kills. And I am with it. And the lullabies fall silent.   An inner monologue between two languages and identities. Between the black and white of the pinscreen 'L’Alpine'.
Samaa
Director - Ehsan Gharib
Country - Canada
Time - 2:29
Samaa means to listen with your mind, floating in stillness. This two-minute film embodies samaa, where unexpected movements and different forms of agitation result in a “spiritual drunkenness.”
Echoes
Director - Robinson Drossos
Country - France
Time - 7:26
Echoes is a contemplative adventure into the depths of a noisy world. Guided by a distant melody echoing through concrete and rock, we follow a character wandering in the dark. Strange places take shape in the glow of his torchlight, and the sound of water droplets on the ground punctuates our footsteps. In the distance, we hear muffled music, where does it come from?
Steamboat
Director - Christine Veras
Country - United States
Time - 1:40
Steamboat Willie (1928) Disney's pioneering animation entered the public domain in 2024, opening up the possibility of reinterpreting and remixing this iconic animation character as portrayed in the film. In this experiment, we printed and manually removed Mickey Mouse's character frame-by-frame from the picture. We aimed to deconstruct its significance by replacing its void with images of historically and personally meaningful moments documented since the original film's release. The music in this short plays the original animation song in reverse, aiming to challenge its biased cultural associations. The short simultaneously pays homage and questions our shared history and relation with the popular mouse icon.
I Left A Sentence in Your Ear
Director - Jam Dong
Country - United States
Time - 3:29
A person goes on a journey to find the last word their loved one left. 
Yuck!
Director - Loïc ESPUCHE
Country - France
Time - 13:10
Yuck! Couples kissing on the mouth are gross. And the worst is, you can’t miss them: when people are about to kiss, their lips become all pink and shiny. Little Léo laughs at them, just like all the kids at the summer camp. But he has a secret he won’t tell his friends: his own mouth has actually begun glistening.  And, in reality, Léo desperately wants to give kissing a try.