BAF5 - Films for Children

I'm going to label these together because I'm not sure what I can say about all these shorts. I must say, I found a lot of these adorable (Balloon Birds, Pik Pik Pik, The Elephant And The Bicycle and Goodnight Rainbow) and Nain Géant was plain gorgeous to me.

What came forward the most to me was that the most is that even though animations for children mostly want to tell a story, that doesn't mean the art style has to suffer for it. A few were actually so clever to me, that they surpassed the level "for children" and could be shown as regular shorts as well for the story was really generic, not kiddie based to my liking.



BALLOON BIRDS - trailer from Marjolaine on Vimeo.

Balloon Birds, directed by Marjolaine Perreten, was really sweet. It was really short and had these two tiny birds as main characters. It was a cheeky film about two birds having fun with each other. The style is really simple and the sounds were really high pitched which gave it a huge cute-factor. It was pretty darn cute to be honest. Doesn't matter. Still loved it.

The other one I want to talk about is The Elephant And The Bicycle, directed by Olesya Schukina.
The story is about an elephant which cleans the city from its rubbish for a little bit of money in return. It's a regular thing he does everyday and afterwards he buys himself bananas for a treat. One day he sees an advert for a bicycle. It's so pretty, he dreams of it and he really wants one. So he starts to save his money. He's working extra hard, extra hours, all to get the money together for the bicycle with big hopes in mind. The reality turned pretty sour. The bike was really tiny, while the elephant was humongous. Sad that his hard work didn't pay off he stays inside upset in his house for days until the people living around him start complaining that the streets aren't clean. The elephant leaves the house, puts the bike in a bag and starts walking around the city, finding a small girl worthy of the bicycle. Making her happy his spirits lift up and starts his usual routine of cleaning the city again.
The short was really funny and cute, the story was simple and it was mostly the choice of style that made it appeal to children to me. I think with another choice of style this short could work easily as a regular short as well.


Nain Géant, directed by Fabienne Giezendanner was plain lovely. I really love their style for the animation. "According to tradition, Petite Neige, a young inuit, needs to capture a low flying bird in order to pass into the world of grown-ups. On the verge of catching it, she falls into a mysterious crevice belonging to the giant dwarves, an ogre with the power to change his size at will by sneezing. An initiatory tale for grown ups and little ones." The story and artwork was really gorgeous and they conveyed their message pretty well