Animation From Canada in Spotlight in ‘Show of Shows’

Four award-winning new films from the National Film Board of Canada will screen at “The Animation Show of Shows,” a free program at the Alex Theatre in Glendale at noon on Saturday.

These very different films attest to the ongoing vigor of the film board as an international center of creativity in animation, despite budget cutbacks in recent years.

Paul Driessen juxtaposes the fate of three damsels in distress and the inept rescue efforts of heroes from classic fairy tales, the Old West and a modern city in the wonderfully silly “Three Misses.”

The rescues are hampered by Puss in Boots, the Giant from “Jack and the Beanstalk” and Cinderella waylaying three of the Seven Dwarfs as they rush to aid Snow White, a lost cowboy’s search for his missing horse and an apartment dweller’s struggle to get out his own front door.

Torill Kove uses simple visuals to recount the curious part her family played in Norwegian history in “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts.”

Eugene Fedorenko and Rose Newlove depict Chelm, the town inhabited by fools of Yiddish folklore in the broadly comic “Village of Idiots.” When Shmendrik, an inhabitant of Chelm, gets lost, he’s amazed to find himself in a village that’s virtually identical to the one he left.

The most honored and curious film in the program is “When the Day Breaks” by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis. After witnessing a fatal car accident, Ruby the Pig looks for elements that link the seemingly isolated lives of the inhabitants of a modern city.

Earlier this year, “Day Breaks” won the Grand Prix for short film at the Annecy International Animated Festival and the Palme d’Or for short film at Cannes; despite its striking mixture of techniques, the film lacks the poignancy of Tilby’s Oscar-nominated “Strings.”

*

* “The Animation Show of Shows” screens at noon Saturday at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. (818) 243-2611.