Brush the Teddy's Toes

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.

Len Lye (1901-1980) was a pioneer of experimental animation, and also of kinetic sculpture. This short film dramatically presents 18 minutes inside the head of the artist as a teenager. The opening scenes are set in New Zealand in the year 1917, on the day when Lye (setting out on his bicycle to deliver newspapers) makes his excited discovery that motion can be the basis for a radically new approach to art.

In the vestibule of a hospital room, a young boy waits to see his dying mother. The clamor and spiralling movements of bodies around him intensify, forming a grotesque circus—a cacophonous circle that pushes the child back, depriving him of one final touch of his mother's hand. Using rotoscoped drawings suggestive of charcoal sketches, as well as 3D and object animation techniques, The Circus compels viewing with its unsettling realism. Colour is employed metaphorically to subtly express the promise and the memory of maternal affection. Nicolas Brault's highly personal film, suffused with poetic modesty, casts a poignantly sincere gaze on the heartbreak of a child facing the fearful, mysterious experience of his mother's death.

A daughter is constantly overshadowed by her famous father, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world.

Eric Leiser displays his boundless creativity in this short collection; A stunning compilation of works presented with a mixture of live action, stop motion animation, puppetry and pixilation techniques, produced between 2001 and 2006.

A wise old man teaches a boy the art of building. The boy develops outstanding skills. He builds the most magnificent palaces, but something inside him atrophies. The flip side of humanity, the shadow, grows beyond him.

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The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.

After witnessing an old dark stormy cloud painfully rain and die in sorrow; Noma, a puffy white cloud realizes that Mixtli, her daughter, a dark stormy cloud, is in danger of raining prematurely.

This wonderful story happened in the age of valiant knights, beautiful princesses, and battling sorcerers. Ruslan, a wandering artist dreaming to become a knight, met beautiful Mila and fell in love with her; he didn’t even suspect that she is the King’s daughter. However, the lovers’ happiness wasn’t meant to last too long. Chernomor, the evil sorcerer, appeared in a magic vortex and stole Mila right before Ruslan’s eyes to transform her power of love into his own magic power. Without further ado, Ruslan sets out on a chase after the stolen princess to overcome all obstacles and to prove that real love is stronger than magic.

An old lady’s house is full of boxes filled with memories. Every Wednesday, along with her cockroach friends, she tells her granddaughter wonderful stories. But as the little girl grows bigger, they start running out of space inside the house.

A widowed field mouse must move her family -- including an ailing son -- to escape a farmer's plow. Aided by a crow and a pack of superintelligent, escaped lab rats, the brave mother struggles to transplant her home to firmer ground.

Hasan Everywhere is an animation which broaches the subtlety of a relationship between a man and a woman who bear the passports of enemies, to sympathetically deal with the subjects of death, grief, lost opportunity; but mostly it seeks to demonstrate the possibility of friendship triumphing over the deepest of rifts between two people. In that regard it is most unusual among the standard fare of animated shorts.

Acclaimed Canadian artist Cliff Eyland looks back on his life after a successful double lung transplant.

A poor artist accidentally discovers the use of blood to paint his works and now he's on the search for the perfect color.

An acclaimed artist gets a bad review and deals with it the only way he can.

Baldies – What About My Hair? is an animated short about a fearless group of kids battling cancer who meet in hospital and turn their fight into an adventure. Using imagination, humour, and gentle metaphors, the film shows that a kid with cancer is still a kid—ready to laugh, play, and prove that being bald is cool.

Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche.

Yadira, a creative young Cuban girl, struggles packing on her final day home. Embarking on an immigration journey alone, her suitcase feels too small to carry everything her heart holds.

We hear a whole catalogue of technical, moral, and financial instructions, ranging from practical to absurd, each introduced by “It works . . . ,” as in “It works in the shops and in all of the malls; it works when you cut off your microscopic balls. . . . It works if you heat up the nickel, if you save up the dime, and on a blackballer I wasted my prime. . . However, a single glance at the homeless protagonist and his forlorn setting suffices to clarify that none of this advice has worked all that well for him.