keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

The National Film Board of Canada holds an annual hothouse, where emerging Canadian animators are offered a 12 week internship at their facility in Montreal. The next hothouse will take place from March 5 to May 25, 2012 and submissions on the theme of sheep dreams must be in by January 24. The complete details are here . By following links on the left, you can see the films that have been created during previous hothouse sessions.

The National Film Board of Canada will host an animation open house at its Montreal office on Monday, October 25. You can find details here .

The National Film Board of Canada periodically runs a program called Hothouse, where they offer emerging animators the paid opportunity to create short films at the NFB. The program is only open to Canadian citizens or landed immigrants and the call has just gone out for the sixth edition, for which all films will be made in stereoscopic 3D. The deadline for submissions is February 19 and the program will run from April 5 to June 25 in Montreal. Anyone interested can find out more details here .

Cordell Barker talks about The Cat Came Back . (link via Jim Caswell .)

The saying goes that comedy is a man in trouble. There is no shortage of trouble in Cordell Barker's films. In The Cat Came Back and Strange Invaders , a character arrives who is first welcome and then is revealed to be a source of chaos, destroying the lives of those around it. Both films end with the trouble-making character multiplying. In the first film, the main character accidentally kills himself while trying to get rid of the cat, and is then haunted by 9 feline ghosts. In Strange Invaders , the alien child calls down more of his brethren after destroying the home and marriage of the main characters. While it turns out to be a dream, the woman is pregnant with multiple children who resemble the alien child. These films are structurally very similar and both keep the chaos localized. The main characters are unfortunate victims, but their problems are not typical. While we can identify with their frustrations, the films say little about our own lives. With Runaway , ...