The Formation of Clouds

Two strangers, a man and a woman, sit beside each other on an airplane. After takeoff, the plane goes through some turbulence - and, influenced by the unknown, the man's spirit plunges into a different world. Here, his desires take control, and the result is a grand romantic saga. In this animated film, director Georges Schwizgebel masterfully sweeps us into another world through music and movement, breaking down the boundaries between desire and reality. Set to the music of the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19, the film transorts us into the traveller's labyrinthine thoughts. Animated with pencil, pastels and acrylics, and underpinned by the musical dialogue between piano and cello, Romance is a dazzling visual transcription of this Rachmaninoff scherzo.

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.

Flawed is nothing less than a beautiful gift from Andrea Dorfman's vivid imagination, a charming little film about very big ideas. Dorfman has the uncanny ability to transform the intensely personal into the wisely universal. In Flawed she deftly traces her encounter with a potential romantic partner, questioning her attraction and the uneasy possibility of love. But, ultimately, Flawed is less about whether girl can get along with boy than whether girl can accept herself, imperfections and all. In many ways, Flawed is both an exquisite tribute to the art of animation and a loving homage to storyboarding, a time-honoured way of rendering scenes while pointing the way to the dramatic arc of the tale. Here Dorfman lets her colourful storyboards shape up into the very content of the film. The resulting effect is pure and fresh, as if we were watching the birth not only of love but of the film itself.