We've started compiling information about new short films for our AWNreaders, appropriately titled "Where's My Shorts?" Lest we get toojovial, each week, we'll provide a brief compilation of new shortfilms premiering during that week, either at a festival, exhibition,screening or online. They could be gems, they could be industrialeffluent, we hazard no guess. However, we can tell you that theworks are supposedly "new," which gives us hope that someone,somewhere is doing something besides lying around their den, eatingCheetos and cleaning their ears with a pencil.
Sharon Katz, creator of HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH (Audience Choice Award,Chicks 'n Flicks Film Festival), has finished her newest animatedshort, THE ANGEL'S FOOT CAKE / DER FUS TORT. In the film, DrinkelehFresserkeh decides to make a cake in the shape of an Angel's foot.The Angels take umbrage and the fun begins in this delightfullyraucous modern Yiddish animated tale. The film premiers April 29,2001 at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. For more information, visitwww.sharonkatz.net. . . Rochester, New York's Animatus Studio ispremiering their latest Flash Webtoons: The Dinner Dogs' TOTALLY ME,a music video for kids, and SU AND MO EPISODE TWO, the continuingstory of the lap-dancing bad boys of animation. The Dinner Dogs are amusical group that perform hip, imaginative songs for children. SUAND MO, twin sumo wrestlers, are notorious for the patent-pendingextreme lap-dancing that they perform at the world famous ClubHippendale's. The new shorts can be found at www.animatusstudio.com. . .Eyelumination Studio has reinvented America's best-loved cloth chimpsin a 3D animated short, SPORT MONKEYS, which premiers on iFilm.comthis week. Written and directed by Ryan Nellis, the film follows thecontinuing adventures of Kobi-ba-bobi, a young sock monkey who learnsthe meaning of honesty and fair play, and a whole cast of woollycharacters. SPORT MONKEYS traces lineage to the Depression, whenmoney and toys were scarce and mothers sewed together socks and otherscaps of fabric to make "sock monkeys." The new short can be foundat www.ifilm.com. . . The second installment of Augenblick Studios' threepart Flash-animated DIGNIFIED DEVIL adventure series premiers thisweek on Hypnotic. Many have mistaken Franklin Raine for the devil,dignified or not. Appearances are deceiving though. He's not thedevil. He's actually a pretty nice guy. A drunk and a drifter,Frank is always somewhere he shouldn't be. Always trying to makesense. Always drinking... Based on a true story. This week,Franklin plays shrink to a troubled young girl and gets repaid infull. The new short can be found atwww.hypnotic.com/hypnotic.asp?content=/dig_devil.asp. . . Also debutingthis week on Hypnotic is EARTH DAY, a unique, 15-minute spoof onold-school slasher flicks featuring a cast of dolls. Created byMeredith Casey and Michiko Byers, the live-action film uses specialeffects and experimental camera work to shoot the dolls in action asthey embark on a nature retreat only to be massacred by a psychotickiller through a series of bloody attacks with chainsaws, drills andshark spears. The film features the voices of Mark Hamill and JasonRitter of MTV's UNDRESSED. Visit www.hypnotic.com.
