Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow's ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE offers some hot animation inspired by the cold war

Just the other day TrustMovies was wondering how many of us are all that familiar with British history, let alone with that of our own USA. And now here we are getting a good chunk of the history of the African country of Angola, which was, until winning its independence from Portugal in 1975, one of the many "colonized" African countries. That independence led to a decades-long struggle between the ruling party, the MPLA (supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba) and an insurgent group (UNITA) supported by the United States and South Africa. Yes, that ever-famous/infamous Cold War was full-swing in Angola, just as it was in so many other places around the globe.

The new combination-animated/live-action movie, ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, is based upon the eponymously titled book by Ryszard Kapuściński, a noted Polish journalist/ photographer/poet/author.

If the story of a hugely difficult independence, mass killings and yet another nasty product of that seemingly endless (and maybe starting up all over again) cold war would seem to be an odd choice for animation, think again.

The film's directors (and co-writers), Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow (pictured at left, with de la Fuente on the right), do full justice to Kapuściński's penchant for poetry and reportage.

The animation (above and below) is by turns beautiful, poetic, impressionistic and horrific -- as befits the story here told. Further, the animation and story are very well complemented by the use of live-action documentary footage in which a few of the true-life characters we meet are shown to us now, some forty years on, in old age.

The back and forth between animation and live-action is never jarring however; instead, it flows as easily as do the assorted moods, images and characters woven through the story. We meet everyone from our protagonist's fellow reporters and a gorgeous female rebel-in-chief (below)

to the famous hero-of-the-revolution, Farrusco (below), who oddly proves the film's most surprising and poignant creation, and some of the students Kapuściński teaches back home in Poland,

one of whom (below) poses a question to his instructor that lingers for good reason. The film is full of ideas, as well as visual appeal.

Given all we now know about our own country's involvement in the overthrow of numerous democratically elected foreign governments, as well as its happily propping up just about any bloody dictatorship, so long as that dictator says he's anti-Communist, what we see here will seem pretty much par for the course. (Except, of course, for the people of the foreign country in question.)

While the use of live-action in tandem with animation proves consistently compelling, Another Day of Life reaches its zenith at the end, as the credits roll and we learn more about Kapuściński, his life and work. The film is, deservedly, a paean meant to honor this man. It thoroughly does.

GKIDS will release the movie -- a Poland/Spain/Germany/Belgium/ Hungary/France co-production running 85 minutes, in English, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish (with English subtitles as needed) -- this Friday, September 13, in New York City (at the IFC Center) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Glendale).

Cam Christiansen's animated film of David Hare's thoughtful, rigorous play, WALL

The Israel/Palestine situation, with emphasis on the 435-mile long wall that helps divide the two peoples/nations, is the subject of the beautiful, sad, moving and thought-provoking new animated film, WALL, written for the screen by David Hare and based upon his 2009 play of the same name.

As animated and directed by Cam Christiansen (shown above, right, with Mr. Hare) in black/white/gray tones to which but a trace of color is very occasionally added -- only toward the conclusion do we get a riot of gorgeous color, via the graffiti that decorates the Palestinian side of the wall -- the film's loose yet rich visuals seem to TrustMovies an excellent complement to the very-much-worth-hearing ideas and arguments presented here.

Playwright Hare, who narrates a good deal of the movie, knows better than to simply take the expected left-leaning stance toward the whole situation, in which the "solution" of the wall has proven to be every bit as much of a problem. According to the International Court of Justice, the wall is contrary to international law, yet we see an animated version of the discotheque suicide bombing that was a major precursor to the wall and can understand why it has been built.

The movie is a journey, both geographically (inside the wall and in the Palestinian-occupied area outside) and emotionally/intellectually via the thoughts and ideas of a number of people we meet (Israeli and Palestinian), during which we come to better understand the reason for and the results (some of them perhaps unintended) of the wall.

As you might expect from Hare, the "take" on all this is measured, low-key, intelligent and necessarily problematic. As one of many speakers we hear from during the course of the film, a presumably left-leaning Israeli, notes early on, "Eighty per cent of the terror attacks against Israel have stopped since the wall. Am I not meant to be pleased by this?!" Yes. But.

For the Palestinians who must earn their living, most of whom we must assume are law-abiding and peace-loving, the wall means daily injustice writ large, via the checkpoints through which they must pass, usually waiting in impossibly long lines, often deliberately kept in that state. Does it really come down to death via terror or hardship via the wall. As Hare notes, the first is irreversible; the second, while reversible, has so far not been.

From famous Israeli writer David Grossman and a Palestinian taxi driver to a Hamas torture technique used against those suspected of informing and our arrival in the huge but now-barely-there city of Nablus -- the animation for which is simply stunning -- this journey is a consistently compelling one.

The finale, by the way, is a supreme example of art triumphing over oppression -- even if only in our minds and hearts. Ctrl + Alt + Delete indeed.

Wall, a National Film Board of Canada release that runs just 81 minutes, has its theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, April 3, in New York City at Film Forum for a one-week run. The entire run is being shown free of charge, by the way, thanks to the generosity of the Ostrovsky Family Fund. Tickets are available via the Film Forum box-office on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of show only.

With THE 19TH ANNUAL ANIMATION SHOWS OF SHOWS, Ron Diamond curates yet another cornucopia of styles, art and ideas

“Because animation is such a natural medium for dealing with abstract ideas and existential concerns, the ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS has always included a number of thoughtful and engaging films. However, more than in previous years, I believe that this year’s program really offers contemporary animation that expresses deeply felt issues in our own country and around the world.” So states Ron Diamond, founder and curator of this yearly collection of some of the best animation from around the globe, now in its 19th go-round.

TrustMovies would agree with Mr. Diamond's assessment (the curator is shown at left), as this year's program, THE 19TH ANNUAL ANIMATION SHOWS OF SHOWS, offers at least three wonderful and near-great-or-maybe-fully-there examples of the best that animation can currently offer.

If some of the lesser lights on the program may lack what it takes to send them over the top, still, the variety of ideas, moods and animation styles that are present here, when coupled to the brevity of so many of the works, would suggest that viewers will hardly be bored. (And if they are, this will last barely a minute or two.)

Herewith is this year's program, listed first to last (along with my short review of each) in the order of presentation. I would greatly suggest that, should you find yourself growing a bit impatient with things, as did I, please hold on. The program grows better by miles as it moves along, with some of the richest, most provocative work appearing in the latter half.

CAN YOU DO IT, via Quentin Baillieux (France) offers a sleek style and very interesting color palette during its three-minute compilation of horse racing and, I guess, street life -- though the mixture left me mostly appreciative of this animator's style rather than anything he might saying.

In TINY BIG (2017) from Belgium, Lia Bertels uses simple black-and-white line drawings on a white background with now-and-then blobs of bright color to create "nature" scenes that are odd and occasionally compelling. Over five-and-one-half minutes, she takes us on a journey that's definitely her own but might translate to something you can understand, as well.

In just under three-and-one-half minutes, certainly the most famous of our animators, Pete Docter (of Pixar's Up and Inside Out) gives us -- in NEXT DOOR --  one of his noisy little girls, along side her very annoyed neighbor, and shows us how common ground is surprisingly found. It's cute and forgettable, but the animation is colorful, funny and fast-moving.

One of the longer pieces in the program, THE ALAN DIMENSION (2017) by Jac Clinch of the U.K., is also the Animation Show of Shows' most narrative-heavy segment. Offering an oddball "take" on precognition (our hero generally sees/predicts awfully run-of-the-mill events) and how this affects his home life, has some charm and some OK animation (of the mostly colorful, old-fashioned-but-enjoyable sort), but it all seems somehow too little, even at its certainly not-lengthy running time.

BEAUTIFUL LIKE ELSEWHERE (2017) by Elise Simard, Canada, is nearly five minutes of very personal though not terribly comprehensible visuals that seems to be an amalgam of various styles melded into a dark, strange piece that I could not connect with in terms of either theme or content. In fact, this is the one film of the batch -- given the week or ten days between first watching and then writing this review -- that I had to go back and view again just to remember what I had seen. Still, the animation is certainly varied and impressive.

A surprise here is something called HANGMAN by Paul Julian and Les Goldman (from the USA), which was actually created back in 1964 but only restored this past year. Based on a poem by Maurice Ogden that tells a tale of injustice and responsibility, the subject is certainly as timely now as it was then, considering its not particularly subtle references to everything from the Holocaust to Fascism, persecution and guilt. Its main achievement, however, is to remind us of how far animation has come over the fifty-plus years since, for this eleven-minute movie, despite its occasional painterly nod to the work of Giorgio de Chirico, is awfully heavy-handed and obvious -- right down to the "poetic" narration and the musical score.

Classical art lovers will get a kick out of the two-and-one-half-minute THE BATTLE OF SAN ROMANO, (2017) by Georges Schwizgebel, from Switzerland, a short that plays around with the famous painting by Paolo Uccello. The filmmaker animates this art work in so many clever ways, turning it into such movement and action yet without actually changing or demeaning it in any way that he brings the battle to life in quite a new and original manner.

TrustMovies has never been a huge fan of anime, and yet the seven-minute film that proves the most charming, funny and sweet of this whole batch is GOKUROSAMA (2016) by Clémentine Frère, Aurore Gal, Yukiko Meignien, Anna Mertz, Robin Migliorelli and Romain Salvini (from France, not Japan). Taking place in one of those modern malls, and another example that's strong on narrative, it tells the tale of what happens when an old woman's back suddenly goes out, and how the mall's denizens join together to help her. This one is a non-stop delight.

I don't even like basketball, and yet the pencil/charcoal line drawings that spring to wonderful life in DEAR BASKETBALL -- (2017) by Disney veteran Glen Keane (USA) and based on a poem written by Kobe Bryant, as he was about to retire from the game -- moved me to tears. The animation is just splendid, and the musical score, composed by John Williams, is a winner, as well, as the poem takes us through Bryant's early life and success, right through his goodbye to playing professionally, in five-and-one-half minutes of sheer beauty.

ISLAND (2017) by Max Mörtl and Robert Löbel, from Germany, takes a look at the mating rituals of the strange and colorful. Goofy and charming in equal measure, the two-and-one-half minute movie is here and gone before it can even think of wearing out its welcome.

The shortest of all these shorts -- UNSATISFYING (2016) by Parallel Studio, France -- is also one of the cleverest: just 77 seconds of near-misses brought to funny, animated life. Brevity is indeed and once again the soul of wit.

The absolute gem of this year's mix -- THE BURDEN (2017) by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, from Sweden --  is the longest, too: nearly a quarter hour. It's also a musical (of sorts), as fish guests in a hotel sing about their lives, dancing pigs cavort in their fast-food workplace, we meet telemarketing monkeys and a dog in a supermarket, and finally hear them all sing a kind of Swedish "spiritual" of longing, dreams, and lost lives in a slave-wage workplace from which no one escapes. This is both brilliantly conceived and executed -- the likes of which I have never experienced till now. I hope that the great Roy Andersson has seen this wonderful work, as it very much reminds me of his landmark films.

An oddball, two-minute domesticity festival that begins with a visit from The Grim Reaper is a film called Abeilles Domestiques (Domestic Bees) (2017) by Alexanne Desrosiers, from Canada. In a sense this one seems the least "animated" of all these shorts because it simply moves less. And it's an interesting, try-to-keep-up-with-it look at a "human" hive.

For sheer laugh-aloud humor enhanced with eye-poppingly colorful animation, watch Our Wonderful Nature: The Common Chameleon (2016) by Tomer Eshed, Germany. This three-and-one-half minute joke offers a take-off/take-down of those ubiquitous nature documentaries, and it is by turns hilarious, gorgeous and gross -- with a wonderfully clever finale.

In CASINO (2016) by Steven Woloshen, Canada, a little jazz-inflected, loosey-goosey animation and musical scoring goes a long way. Fortunately, the four-minute running time is just short enough so that the jitters don't quite set it before this ode to gambling and casinos comes to a close.

Remember Her, that great Spike Jonze film in which the "Operating System" (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), after exploring the work of Alan Watts, grows and evolves to the point at which she must abandon our hero and light out for "parts unknown"? Well, the words of Mr. Watts figure into the final and pretty-much masterpiece of this year's array -- EVERYTHING (2017) by David O'Reilly, USA --  in which the ideas and the writing of Watts actually overpower even the fine animation that gives visual life to those ideas. Everything's eleven minutes is full of a philosophy that asks you to try to take a different POV from your usual. The experience in an education and perhaps the best one we could get in these current and seemingly end-of times.

In case you hadn't noticed this 19th Annual Animation Shows of Shows gets better and better as it moves along. The movie,  which has a total running time of 92 minutes, opens this Friday, December 29, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, and will hit a number of other venues in the weeks and months to come. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

SCN: Old-age gets the animated treatment in Ignacio Ferreras' moving WRINKLES

WRINKLES, a new Spanish animated movie that makes its debut at Spanish Cinema Now today, Sunday, December 16, at 2pm, is based on a prize-winning graphic novel by Paco Roca, about a retired bank executive whose Alzheimer's becomes too much for his son's family to handle, and so he is shipped off to a nursing facility. Yes, this is not your everyday, kid-friendly animation tale. (Together with Consuming Spirits, which just opened this week, these two films may constitute, not a trend -- that would take three -- but at least an alternative.)

As directed by Ignacio Ferreras, shown at left, the movie has a simply terrific beginning -- taking place in a bank as a loan is being negotiated -- which then pulls you up short. The animation here is simple, old-fashioned and easy to watch, if not particularly distinguished in any way. There are some cute, funny, sweet touches every so often that keep you alert, but what pulls you in and holds you are the subject, the story and the characters of the residents of this home, brought to relatively specific and pretty sorrowful life by Roca, Ferrares and the animation and writing teams.

The ex-banker, above, to whom his roommate refers as "Rocke-feller," is proper, kindly and losing it slowly, while the roommate (below) is a "main chance" kind of guy who thinks nothing of conning the other residents out of their money ("They won't remember" is his excuse) but still takes good care of his new friend.

There is also the totally out-of-it Modesto, and his wife -- who still loves him above all else and cares for him as though he is still fully conscious -- and another, very proper old woman, who when the pair make a break for it, shown below, decides to join them.

There are a few more people of interest, and a staff who are generally portrayed as being as caring and kindly as possible -- without, it is clear, having much idea what these old folk might be experiencing and/or feeling about it all.

There are some lovely and moving moments (above and below) when the present gives way to memory and the past, and although the movie is sentimental, it does not shy away from nor try to disguise the darkness at the center of this situation. It does offer that roommate the chance to redeem himself, which he takes -- which may not be believable but gives the ending an "up" note.

And so, if you find, as did I, a tear or two falling as you watch, well, you're entitled. Wrinkles takes on the children who place their parents into an environment like this. It not judgmental: Caring for an Alzheimer's patient is no easy task but, then, neither is a group-home environment an easy place to be consigned to.

Wrinkles may just be getting a U.S. release, for I noted in the SCN program a thank you to GKIDS for allowing this screening. I hope so, for the movie certainly has significance worldwide. It plays at SCN once only: today, Sunday, December 16, at 2pm at the Walter Reade. Click here for tickets.

Fernando Trueba's & Javier Mariscal's CHICO & RITA opens theatrically--at last

Three years ago during Spanish Cinema Now, TrustMovies found himself bemoaning the contribution of Fernando Trueba, a piece of high-toned twaddle called The Dancer and the Thief.  While he doesn't take back his dislike of that earlier film (gorgeous to view though it often was), he's delighted to be able to embrace Trueba's newer work, CHICO & RITA, an animated collabor-ation that the Oscar-wining director has created with the enormous contribution of designer/graphic artist Javier Mariscal -- which made is debut at Spanish Cinema Now the following year. Old-fashioned in the dearest of ways -- in its animation, characters, love story, music -- yet using, I think, some quite modern techniques (notice, two photos down, how sunlight streams into the room through the open, wooden window slats), the film provides 94 minutes of near-non-stop enchantment. Along with some wonderful music.

At the SCN press conference held at Instituto Cervantes the day before this series began, Trueba (shown above, left) explained that the real reason he wanted to do this film was to be able to work with and show off the art of Mariscal (above, right). Smart move. I'm not sure who did what (well, Mariscal certainly provided the artwork) but the collaboration comes off seamlessly.

A memory piece -- the fuse of which is lit by a song heard on the radio -- Chico & Rita takes our hero, a now elderly Chico, back to the 1940s when he was a hot young man and a very good piano player ("The best!" his agent/partner exclaims) and he first heard the sexy Rita sing Bésame Mucho. It's love at first sight & sound -- at least on Chico's part -- but being a man, he screws things up. Repeatedly. Rita takes a bit longer to give in, but once she gives, she never takes back.

Their love story -- simple, sweet, sour, and, yes, clichéd (but given the sensuous animation and music, those clichés goes down awfully easily) -- spans continents and hemispheres as the lovers connect, part, reconnect, part and... well, you get the point.

Along the way, we see pre-Castro Cuba in all its tawdry glory (there's even a car chase, or a car/motorcycle-cum-side-car chase, to be exact), and we move from the warm and languid island (below) to New York City in wintertime, two photos down -- the first sight of its neon lights is memorable one -- where Rita finds a new career and life.

While the animation seems relatively simple "line" style, with colors that are rich, bright and saturated, if I am not mistaken, Mariscal and Trueba use some modern effects, too: maybe just a bit of the "wavy" line effect we saw put to use in Linklater's Waking Life.

The movie seems relatively apolitical, as well, which may be a problem for some viewers. Though we 're made aware of the light-skin/dark skin color line that existed in Batista's time, we're also privy to how jazz became "the enemies' music" in the Castro era. Artists want their own kind of freedom, and this movie makes clear that they weren't exactly getting it, come the Revolution -- as most Cuban homosexuals of the period would also have declared.

You might want more from Chico & Rita, but -- for those of us of a certain age, at least -- there's plenty already in which we can bask. After its two Spanish Cinema Now showings, various festival successes, and its critical success in Britain (it was released in Spain only last February), it is finally getting a deserved theatrical release here in the USA, along with a nod from our motion picture academy as one of the five nominations for Best Animated Film. It opens this Friday, February 10, at New York's Angelika Film Center, with limited nationwide release to follow.