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Short films are a delight for me—whether they be hit-and-runs from artists I may not stumble across ever again, or “business cards” for up-and-coming feature film directors. Today we dive into a one-and-a-half-feature to explore this year’s animation showcase and a few of the experimental selections from SlamDance 2025.

CARTOON CORNER:

MIMT (dir. Ted Wiggin; 4 min.)— I swear I’ve seen this animator’s work before. Simple computer graphics (think Glory Days of MS Paint), whose basic nature allow for innumerable flights of form. I recently adopted a cat who seems to be part snake—thanks to Ted Wiggin, I can visualize how that could happen.

Gemini (dir. Jamie Griffiths; 7 min.)— Back in ’82, the Alan Parsons Project used this title and created a wistful, float-y musing. There’s a bit of that sensation in Griffiths’ cartoon here, with its shapes, spirals, and a double cat who has a penchant for pranking its owner in a subtle manner. We all have a reflection.

mnemonic (dir. Raffaele Gans-Pfister; 6 min.)— Described in the digital program as “Building thinks thought, has realization. Landscape in translation.” Can’t say I can improve on that. The animation’s means for this nebulous plot are mesmerizing clay works complemented by pen-scratch 2D representations. Not sure what I saw, but it was gratifying to see it.

‘Never Fall In Love’ (dir. Lucy Sao Wa Lao, Angela En-Yu Lao; 6 min.)— Hate to hate on things, so I’ll just say that this was the only short among the dozen which disappointed. Dog and cat, doomed romance, with one interesting thing barely emerging from the back-ground: what’s up with the merged and split flags? I’m sure I’m missing some political connotations.

Tunnel Wandering (dir. Li Zehao; 10 min.)— Blue ink, or blue water-color? …Not to mention that Windows® dungeon screen-saver interlude. I may never find out what this (mostly) first-person journey is about, but at least I’ll have good company: the character wandering these tunnels doesn’t guess the right answer, either, and never gets past the giant naked woman.

Croûte-mousse (dir. Badminton Plus; 4 min.)— Copyright? On this thing? You better bet your bottom dollar that Badminton Plus ain’t having none of that. Day-Glo tinted TV samplings skitter along, all bound by Day-Glo frames. I believe the title might translate into “bread pudding”, but considering what B-Plus is laying down, most bets are off.

Birth Controlled (dir. Isabela Fraga-Abaza; 5 min.)— Following the school of ugly imagery, this slice of feminist commentary hits the mark—no surprise seeing as the protagonist is a dead-eye shot in the great game show of sex, birthing, and oblique oppression. Violent and graphic, and necessarily so; neither for the prudish nor the cynical.

Anansi the Spider (dir. Jared Hall; 5 min.)— Fanciful, colorful, and concise: Jared Hall had better be going places. Anansi the spider tricks the king of the jungle into letting him tell the story. Stripes morph into a pathway, a great snake undulates upon bamboo, and we’re luckier for having the artful arachnid articulate the anecdotes.

Fish (dir. Yingdan Lai; 7 min.)— A fish in motion tends to be bound by the vessel containing it. A young girl has an aquatic pet, seems to lose it, and ducks out of her recital to dance on the frozen pond as the animator celebrates line and form. Can you find the fish?

A Night at the Rest Area (dir. Saki Muramoto; 11 min.)— It’s nearly 2 o’clock in the morning and there is a brief layover at a rest area. Poor dog can’t seem to get a break, but a least it’s peaceful—except when the harsh wind blows over the assembled animals at the outdoor vending machines. I could feel the wind.

Breadvideo (dir. Benana Sonjira; 13 min.)— Baker Baker makes strange breads, Jared Leto (“no relation”) runs the bakery, and Fifty-Nine tends the till while spewing prime numbers. Stop-motion and ’90s CGI meld together for a story about … well, a customer breaks the building and Baker Baker bakes the 3D-model’s parts until a brief trip to Hell.

Deluge (dir. Meejin Hong; 13 min.)— An accurately titled short. Elaborate black and white doodles, as from a sketcher’s notebook for a boring school class, come to life and cycle through a sequence. Then another doodle comes, and another, washing over the viewer in a meditative wave. After twelve minutes, the screen is black with ink.

THE EXPERIMENTAL LOUNGE:

Track_ing (dir. Chanyeol Lee, Hanna Cho, Samgar Rakym, Ali Tynybekov; 23 min.)— Midi-style tootling, which would work nicely as a 1980s corporate anthem, heralds the approaching trains. These trains, spanning the distance between South Korea and Kazakhstan, are under the observation of a mechanical intelligence which isolates small areas and provides them concise designations. (I am uncertain, though, what to make of the figured dubbed “Savior.”) The fascinations of a young Greenaway live on in this feature: train interiors, train exteriors, and thorough, labelled listings make up our journey. What is mankind’s future? Presuming we’ve got one, we may well be sharing it with something of and beyond ourselves.

Asset. Everything used. All as it used to be. (dir. Sophia Ioannou Gjerding; 15 min.)— Collections of dead things, and esoteric ones at that. Reconstructions of dead things, ones that never existed no less. Svankmajer-esque animated sequences, Quay-fully sprinkled throughout. Stop. “Asset…” also explores themes of the past’s unlikely crash into the future (to coin a phrase, I’ll call this “the present”), focusing on dead, dying, and forgotten languages and their parallels with dead, dying, and forgotten insects. Fans of Skyrim won’t be disappointed, and neither will lovers of Laplandish lepidoptery. Stop. Ms Gjerding delights in her esoterica, reminding us that our own limited slice of time is best spent with a curious nature. Broom-Broom!

Stroad Movie (dir. Pablo Garcia; 10 min.)— I’m not sure what it says about New Jersey that it demands a featurette about its streets and roads (“Stroads”, if you will; Pablo Garcia certainly embraces the portmanteau). This pastiche of guerrilla stroadside interviews—Mr Garcia cheerily approaches stopped motorists to inquire their memories of stroad moments—and shots of many New Jersey stroadways is a breezy affair. I envy the stroaderists who witnessed the saucy intersection dancer clad in a black-with-yellow-double-line dress and traffic light head piece. The closing credits wrap up with a statement which prompts something to consider whilst traveling the nation’s criss-crossing strotorways.