Peter and Ben

Pinny Grylls, UK

Documentary, 2007, 10'

Peter is a man, who retired from social life and settled in an isolated valley to cattle sheeps. Ben is a young orphan he found and adopted, and with who he created a very deep link of friendship. Ben is a sheep.

Is it a good idea to be friend with a sheep ? He grew up with Peter, and developped some habits of a spoiled child, entering in the house, very curious, eating anything. He follows him when he takes care of his cattle, not adapted to the life with other sheeps, but very sensitive to Peter's words and moods.

This is a documentary and a double portrait... The camera follows Peter while he is wondering about this relation-sheep. The result is very sentitive, with beautiful moments, though funny, when he tries to release Ben in the hills with the other sheeps, and secretely hopes that he will come back, listening to the « Beeeeh » to regognise him. But as he doesn't come back, he says with regret in his woice « He could be more a sheep than a human, after all... »

Never the man seems insane or absurd : the two friends are just living together, and their relationship, out of nowhere, seems very natural, very attaching...

Bruno

Sam Goetz, USA

Fiction, 2007, 34'

Derek is a misanthrophic and asthmatic boy. He is a bicycle enthousiast and wants to be strong and willy. He live with his brother Bruno, who embodies the perfect american boy, sportive and healthy, but terribly sensitive and sitcom-loving. Their coexistence is not easy, as it seems Derek is jalous of Bruno's healthy body, and bored by his over-sensitive personality, very easy to influence and somewhat childish.

Even with some lenght, the camera portraits the two brothers and ask the question of the place of each character in this closed world (Trenton, New Jersey), and how different persons can get along, but there is behind the brothership the question of how the body and the mind are linked. Which one makes the other ? Derek, trying to overhelm his asthme with his sportive efforts, while the normal life seems to be out of reach, is he pathetic or strong ? And the brother Bruno, who is the american winner, the very ordinary boy, who has no efforts to do to be a good basket player, but who can cry in front of an ordinary sitcom, and has sentenses about « lisetening to one's heart », what is he really ? None of them really accept what they are, but both are unable to change, despite how hard they try.

The camera gives an large importance to the scenery, an industrial and deserted city, while the secondary characters are only support for the two protagonists, played by two very convicing actors (which I can't say for the others). Far away from all the clichés, two contrasted young men trying to be someone...

Terminus

Trevor Cawood, Canada

Fiction, 2007, 8'

A man is waiting for his metro. Comes a strange creature, made of granite cylinder (this kind of thing that prevent cars to go in some streets) comes to him, and start a danse. The man doesn't want to danse with it and try to escape. But now, he is cursed : the creature will follow him. Anywhere. Forever. No matter how hard he tries to escape, it will find him. So he has to deal with. Until he sees other people like him : one followed by a creature made of road signs, one followed by a kind of escalator...

The use of a very concrete material for animation prevent from the feeling of « ireality » of 3D creations in a filmed world. And there is something absurd, but not without sense, of these creature made from urban material. Are they double of the people, are they the emissaies of a bored city searching for distractions, or creatures of judgement ?

Distracting and inventive, a film without speeches and theory, but a curious universe with its rules...