Animation Express Season 1 Episode release dates & where to watch

1. How People Got Fire

This introspective short animation takes place In the village of Carcross, in the Tagish First Nation. Neighbourhood pillar Grandma Kay tell the local children the tale of how Crow brought fire to people. As the story unfolds, we also meet 12-year-old Tish, an introspective, talented girl who feels drawn to the elder. Here, past and present blend, myth and reality meet, and the metaphor of fire infuses all in a location that lies at the heart of this Native community’s spiritual and cultural memory.

2. Spare Change

This animation short by Ryan Larkin (Walking, Street Musique, etc.) recounts some “comical experiences” Larkin had during his many years as a panhandler in Montreal. It tells the story of Astral Pan, a street beggar (voiced by Larkin himself), who takes us on a wild journey from the sidewalks of a wintry Montreal day, to the gates of Heaven and Hell and back. The great filmmaker passed away before finishing his film. Spare Change was completed by a friend, producer and singer-songwriter Laurie Gordon, assisted by a team of young, devoted animators.

3. Robes of War

This animated short is a lyrical exploration of the impact of war on women, their bodies and their families. Bringing a feminist sensibility to a contemporary issue, it looks at what happens when war insinuates itself inside the very being of a woman—she who once gave life.

4. Subservience

In this animated short, the selfishness of the bourgeoisie and the oppression and exploitation of its servants take centre stage as a puppet show presents the tragicomedy of a society in its death throes.

5. Drux Flux

Part figurative, part abstract, Drux Flux is an animated short comprised of fast-flowing images showing modern people crushed by industry. Inspired by One-Dimensional Man, by philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the filmmaker deconstructs industrial scenes and their terrifying geometry to show the inhumanity of progress.

6. Forming Game

This animated short from Malcolm Sutherland is an engaging dance of shapes and sounds. The "game" is played by opening the box, unfolding the board and placing shapes on it that you manipulate with your hands. There are no winners or losers in this game; the fun is in the creative way the forms unfold. Features a score by Luigi Alleman and music by Ravi Shankar.

7. Hungu

Under the African sun, a child walks in the desert with his kin. Death is prowling, but a mother's soul resurrected by music will return strength and life to the child when he becomes a man. Inspired by the grace and raw beauty of African rock paintings, Nicolas Brault paints a story without borders, with the humanity and elegance of a universal narrator.

8. Madame Tutli-Putli

This stop-motion animated film takes viewers on an exhilarating existential journey into the fully imagined, tactile world of Madame Tutli-Putli. As she travels alone on the night train, weighed down with all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past, she faces both the kindness and menace of strangers. Finding herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure, adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons.

9. Rains

As a sudden downpour lashes the city, all seek shelter. Just for a moment, time expands into immobility. Human activity slows down and almost stops. Some wait in a bus shelter, others are set on going out, if their umbrellas will open. Wiser, the birds just wait out the storm. When the rain stops, the bubble bursts and life goes on. A pencil-drawn animation film.

10. Retouches

Like the waves that sweep the beach tirelessly, this animated short film evolves into a series of repetitive movements that gradually correct and transform our environment. Georges Schwizgebel plays with perception and representation, and enjoys disrupting the balance of forms. In a brushstroke, an escalator becomes an athletic track, in a few brushstrokes, the ripples of a hair reveal a forest shaken by the wind, in a spectacular reversal of point of view, a tennis court rotates around a motionless ball. Oscillating between dream and reality, Retouches is the work of a graphic tightrope walking freely on the wire of animation cinema. Film without words.

11. Rosa Rosa

While war is thundering at the gates of the city, Rosa and her lover live serenely together, trying to preserve a fragile normality. Rosa Rosa is the interweaving of individual and collective fates via a love story simply told by the couple themselves. In this animation using reworked photos, Félix Dufour-Laperrière offers an unusual graphic world where public and private spaces overlap.

12. The Man Who Slept

A young woman shares her life with a sleeping ghost. She lives in the denial of a loss that has left her all alone. This vibrantly textured animated film is a work about resilience, a journey to night’s end that culminates in an awakening. Without words

13. The Spine Finale

Animated by Chris Landreth. In this animated short, Mr. Landreth returns with a poignant story of redemption that takes us into the relationship between a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction after 26 years of marriage.