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After a harsh breakup, our hero, Guy, decides to leave it all and fly to New Zealand hoping to find true love. However, he must first defeat his inner demons before he can put the past behind him.

For the fifth year in a row, we are delighted to present the selections for the Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival, the premier online showcase for animated short premieres by student filmmakers. We like to believe that each year is our strongest year, but this year's selections feel particularly vital, illustrating the remarkable breadth of work currently being produced by student filmmakers around the globe.

Altneuland (Old New Land) is a 2012 graduation film directed by Sariel Keslasi at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. In the film, Keslasi re-interprets Theodor Herzl’s 110-year-old utopian novel Altneuland through contemporary eyes. He writes:

By using a surrealist allegory, the film tries to deal with the collapse of Herzl’s dream and seeks to emphasize the sense of absurdity and instability of my personal experience as an individual in the Israeli society.

I met the thoughtful Keslasi a few months ago at the Anifilm festival in the Czech Republic, where his film was in competition. Altneuland also was in competition at Annecy last month. Keslasi’s strong art direction and his cinematic eye for staging and cutting has already landed him work in the Israeli animation scene, where he recently worked on Ari Folman’s feature The Congress.

A beautifully stylized, minimilist short animation by Adar Rom and Avi Naim, created for their Motion Design Class at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

A beautifully stylized, minimilist short animation by Adar Rom and Avi Naim, created for their Motion Design Class at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

A mother who has to deal with her video-game addicted son. Created by four 3rd year students (Guy Elnathan, Alon Tako, Daniel Lichter and Sivan Kotek) from Bezalel Academy of the Arts, Israel.

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design students Boaz Balachsan and Dima Tretyakov recorded Israeli children giving their opinions about God and faith and interpreted their thoughts through animation. The idea recalls the Irish animated series Give Up Yer Aul Sins, which was based on 1960s recordings of children telling Bible stories, but Balachsan and Tretyakov add a quirky mixed media style and clever visual/audio transitions. See development art from God is Kidding on the film’s blog.

(Thanks, Elran Ettinger)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Boaz Balachsan, cut-out, Dima Tretyakov, Israel, Mixed media