Private Eyes

Mathieu n'a jamais peur dans le noir parce qu'il y vit toujours. Il cache des yeux partout, dans ses mains, dans ses pieds et surtout dans ses oreilles. Cette semaine, ses parents lui font une surprise pour son anniversaire et le petit détective a bien hâte de découvrir ce que c'est! Réalisé par Nicola Lemay, Les yeux noirs une adaptation animée en stéréoscopie 3D du roman jeunesse de Gilles Tibo (Éditions Soulières - 1999).

Old Hark is a creature of habit. He enjoys living in his weather-beaten house set down amidst the meadows. He has wood to chop, chores to do and time to reflect on a long life. His greatest joy is feeding the birds that have wintered over and have come to depend on him. One day, a black-robed spectre materializes out of the fields, brandishing the Book of Time. But it's too soon! An exchange follows that has the old man reach deep into his memory. Does he have the strength to find the answers he needs to see the birds into spring? Come Again in Spring is a gentle tale about mortality that works in subliminal ways. Can we negotiate our time on earth? How does each one of us reconcile our mortal fate? A lyrical look, exquisitely animated, at a reality as old as humanity, as young as today. Come Again in Spring is adapted from a story by Richard Kennedy by permission of the author.

Lipsett Diaries is a descent into the maelstrom of anguish that tormented famed Canadian experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, who died prematurely at age 49. Taking the form of a diary, this animated film by Theodore Ushev charts the meanderings of psychological distress, with clashes of images and sounds evoking the loneliness of the artist's childhood, his frenzied creations and his dizzying descent into depression and madness. Drawing, as Lipsett did, from archives of diverse origins, even recycling segments of Lipsett's films, Ushev renews his aesthetic by using paint and crayon on paper, to which he applies digital treatments. The result is both spectacular and daring: a fragmented and fascinating short film that plunges us into the whirlwind of a mind out of balance. A collaboration between Ushev and writer Chris Robinson, Lipsett Diaries is a singular study of what happens when genius is on a first-name basis with madness.