Animation and revelation: prominent themes across Watersprite 2015, but particularly so for “Dusk Screenings: Weaving New Threads”. Gathering five projects from four countries, Saturday’s evening shorts present an array of technical and thematic approaches to film.

NINIS, a University of Guadelajara production, charts the revelatory encounter of two young teens. Switching between a variety of focuses and exposure, often within one shot, director Daniel Santana Rodriguez presents a story of experience and its chaotic range. The couple progress by opening their ears. Beauty is found in the coarse as NINIS’s often abrasive sound editing and camera work become oddly endearing. Much more studied is Maja Costa’s KNOPKA. Following the bumbling advances of a young seamstress towards the local baker, the Swiss production is sweet if a little predictable, constricted by an overly cloying use of close-to-mid-length shots (possibly chosen to not expose the limits of the period set design).

The true highlights of the collection are the animations. PLUG AND PLAY depicts the strange, often hypnotic endeavours of plug-headed humans, innately drawn to their various tasks; sometimes with success, sometimes not. THE PRESENT uses Pixar-esque story-telling and graphic design to present the sweet introduction of an amputee puppy and his gruff new owner, in a brief encounter certain to pull the heart strings.

The pick of the pack, however, is ROSSO PAPAVERO, the peculiar, often disturbing animation of a boy’s chance discovery of a mystical other-world. The run-time is short and the narrative plain, but there is something in the construction of ROSSO PAPAVERO which is utterly fascinating. Like CORALINE or THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, director Martin Smatana recognises the simultaneously endearing and haunting potential of stop-motion models, welding it with an equally charming but creepy theme: the circus. As the ring master tempts the young child into the tent with his glowing orb, it’s impossible not to shiver with those desperately suppressed memories of crowds, facepaint and, heaven forbid, clowns.

“Weaving New Threads” are followed by the “What Lies Beneath” series: three Polish films. MIRUNA, LEKCJA and ERRATA each express a strange and disturbing picture of sadism and childhood.

In MIRUNA and ERRATA the complex memories of childhood experience manifest into the brutality of adulthood. Fishing experiences with dad become sexual violence, and spectatorship and guilt develop into self-loathing. LEKCJA, the middle of the three films, instead studies the violent imagination of childhood itself. A young boy buys a cake at a shop. Consuming it in class leads to a strange fantasy that slowly evolves into a death wish for his benign teacher. Impenetrable, sometimes overly so, all three provide an intensity through atmosphere rather than content.

See the Dusk Screenings on 8 March at 4.30pm. Click here for further information.

Rosso Papavero 2014 – trailer from Martin Smatana on Vimeo.