Puppetology

Handmade characters in an array of capers, from Finnish fables to Chilean sci-fi.

We saw so many good puppet shorts this year that the temptation to bring back this programme (first seen at Flatpack 2010) was too much to resist. As before, we’re defining the genre pretty loosely, ranging from the claymation monster attack of Isaac Rentz’s Cage the Elephant promo to the surreal mannequin holiday in A Finnish Fable 2011 (dir: Niina Suominen). There’s spy thrills aplenty in Brick Novax’s Diary (dir: Matt Piedmont), the beguiling/disgusting paper mache sci-fi of El Arca (by Chilean duo Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña), and the return of puppetmaster Johannes Nyholm, whose latest work features his two year old daughter as a hell-raising tourist in Las Palmas. This Is It Collective have lit up Vimeo lately with nifty filmmaking and a special knack for handmade characters and props, and they’ll be here to present their Sundance hit Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.