Ten Animated Films 2005
Distributed by Microcinema International/Microcinema DVD, 1636 Bush St., Suite #2, SF, CA 94109; 415-447-9750
Produced by Signe Baumane Films
Directed by Signe Baumane
DVD, color, compilation of short films (3 min to 20 min). Total running time 110 min.
College - Adult
Film Studies
Date Entered: 06/26/2007
Reviewed by Troy Davis, Media Center Director, Earl Gregg Swem Library, The College of William and MaryAt a time when most "popular" animated films are computer generated, kid oriented blockbusters, its refreshing to see a collection of 2-D animations that demonstrate the artistry of hand-painted, cel-based animation. This DVD is a compilation of Signe Baumane's short films completed between 1993-2005.
Baumane was born in Latvia and after completing several short films, some of which are on this compilation, she moved to New York and began working as production manger, stylist and cel painter for the animator Bill Plympton. Those familiar with the work of Plympton would be right in thinking that Baumane's Ten Animated Films is a compilation for grown-ups. Arranged chronologically on the DVD, the compilation begins with The Witch and the Cow (1993) which shows a small witch's preoccupation with trying to milk a very large cow. Bizarre, absurd, surreal, mythological and each film continues to introduce us to treacherous and wildly-imagined worlds in which human interaction is reduced to some very primal (Freudian and Jungian) motivations: sex, power and blood-letting. For example, in Natasha we are introduced to a neglected house-wife who falls in love with vacuum-cleaner. After "consummating" this love and dumping the bag in the garbage, two vacuum cleaner/human hybrid "offspring" emerge. In Baumane's animated worlds, things, animals, and humans interact in ways that are at once exploitative and strangely redemptive. The narrator of the longest (20 min.) short film on the DVD, The Gold of the Tigers, sums up nicely a common philosophy that thematically links these short films together and, perhaps, accounts for their surrealism: "Nothing, yet everything, [is] infinitely important."
On the DVD is a bonus feature, a 30 minute documentary film, Signe and..., by Latvian filmmaker Dzintra Geka. Itself a stylistic and unconventional work, the documentary offers a glimpse into the personal and artistic life of Baumane.
Recommended for academic library collections particularly those that support film studies programs and/or animation research and practice.