04.09 | 15:45
Sensuality. Comfort-food. Overthinking. Bliss. Love has many faces. Five Estonian animated shorts reveal the complex journeys of love-driven minds. In Priit Pärn’s The Triangle, love becomes a monotonous habit trapped in a stuffy Soviet blockhouse. Kaspar Jancis’ Cartoon d’Or winning Crocodile depicts modern lives as caves of self-pity and individualism. So maybe the feelings of the petite bourgeoise cat in Chintis
Lundgren’s Life with Herman H. Rott are the purest after all? Or do we even need living souls to explain the chemical reactions of love? In Estonian animation classic Nail I inanimate objects – nails, are driven by love. Knot from 1983 is a poetic continuation of this love game between inanimate objects. In this case, interactions happen between two pieces of string. Love Stories joins diverse animated love journeys by authors who have several decades between them. Yet, the questions which have driven them have remained the same, offering joy to romantics and cynics alike.
Curated by Aurelia Aasa
Running time 62 min.
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Estonia | 16:38 | 2009
The story of a former opera star who must by the will of Fate work as a Crocodile in a styrofoam costume entertaining children in the children’s playroom of a shopping centre. This kind of life seems joyless and even disgusting to the former leading tenor, and he vents his frustration by behaving rudely. Until one day, into his life enters a fateful woman and… a crocodile.
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ESSR | 08:20 | 1972
Droll little animation short “Nael” consists of four stories that illustrate aspects of life in Soviet Estonia in the 1970s using stop-motion animation. First up is a story of two nails who fall in love and have a baby only for the bigger nail of the two to turn deadbeat runaway dad. The second story is of a young nail investigating a hammer who suffers the inevitable smack-down. Third up is a gangland fight that ends only when one nail is arrested by the police (represented as a magnet). The fourth story takes place in a circus in which the lion-tamer orders his kitty to perform various demeaning tricks such as jumping through a ring of fire. The lion reserves its best trick at the very end though which of course means a kat-astrophe for the lion tamer.
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ESSR | 07:40 | 1983
In the metamorphosis of two ordinary pieces of rope there is a clear meaning - all people in the world are inseparably related. It is better to live in a friendship.
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ESSR | 18:00 | 1982
When Eduard becomes involved in Julia and Victor’s loveless relationship, a sensual triangle is created which…well, you’ll have to watch it to see.
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Estonia | 11:07 | 2015
Herman is a rat who enjoys heavy drinking, loud grind music and chess. He doesn’t care much for cleaning and the disorder in his apartment only makes him feel more at home. One day a very tidy cat with a weakness for messy macho men decides to move in.