Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

All dogs chase their tails. A dog once succeeds in catching his own tail. That changes his life as he finds his best friend in it.

An exquisitely drawn animation that tells the dramatic story of a mother, who enthusiastically awaited childbirth is turned on its head as something goes wrong that jeopardies the lives of both mother and baby.

Everything moves in the base sequence of the environment, until an unexpected character in its bizarre behavior enters the scene causing the alteration of its own physical structure.

A woman journeys home through tunnels of doubt and what may be an encounter with her guardian angel to the joy of slapping Park Avenue canopies. The film combines Xeroxed photographs with drawn animation, juxtaposing ideas of present reality with remembered, envisioned or emotional truths. Music by Yo La Tengo.

A film that mesmerizes with visual acrobatics. Between waves on a shore and a sleeper breathing, he alters the balance of shapes in the world and plays with perception to grasp the fleeting movement of our lives. Retouches is a series of passing visions of perpetual motion. A film without words.

A girl's innocent game turns into something completely different.

The effect of beauty on a person is that it strikes him dumb. - Paul Valery "Anna Kalus' Sea Dog's Devotion strikes its viewers dumb: This animation film is wordless, though it is based on words, and develops its form and its theme loosely according to the macabre and subtly necrophilic poem Seemannstreue by Joachim Ringelnatz, in which the first-person narrator tells about burying his deceased bride Alwine in the cold ground, then digging her up, and so on." - Bernhard Seiter

A single mother's personal ritual combines her history, poetry and a volleyball-inspired aerobic workout. The piece uses animated and live-action footage to create a kind of temporal collage - where past and present emotional truths coexist and play. Camera: Mark Foster. Music: Yo La Tengo. Cast: Miriam Shor and Max Rosenthal