UTS International Animation Festival 2012

Overview

So that big brown building in the city that sticks out like a sore thumb isn't as dull as its exterior would have you believe. Showcasing the wonders and achievements in the world of animation, the University of Technology, Sydney presents its fourth annual International Animation Festival.

There's a kids' program on at the Powerhouse Museum, but this festival's domain is mostly the fun, trippy, and sophisticated animation being made for adults. The most adult among them are even gathered in one spot, the Late Night Bizarre, which includes such heights of wrongness as Bear-Horse!, Vacuum Attraction, and There's a Dead Crow Outside.

Most of the program is similarly divided into mini-marathons of shorts. There's an Australian Program as well as an International Program (make that two). You also have the opportunity to absorb the legacies of two leading animation schools, London's venerable Royal College of the Arts and the very happening University of Tokyo, in their respective sessions. Perhaps most intriguing of all is the cerebral Poemetrics, a curated set of expressive shorts that each take as their starting point a poetic text, including works by Charles Bukowski and Italo Calvino.

The festival also includes two feature film premieres, the family-friendly, Luc Besson-produced A Monster in Paris (Un Monstre à Paris), which features the voices of Vanessa Paradis and Sean Lennon, and Alois Nebel, the Academy Award-nominated movie based on the Czech Republic's first modern graphic novel.