Trailer: Animating Reality Serves Up 13 Animated Documentary Shorts

Animation might not seem like the most logical choice for documentary filmmaking. But Animating Reality, a collection of 13 short documentaries by an international lineup of directors, shows how animated images can be used to tell true stories.

Animating Reality is available on DVD for $20. Watch the trailer above and see the compilation’s full list of short films below, with descriptions courtesy of distributor A Million Movies a Minute.

Animating Reality’s Short Films

• Yoriko Murakami’s Talking About Amy explores the life and work of Japanese pop artist Emi Iijima while she resided in the United States.

• Corrie Francis’ Conversing With Aotearoa explores the way New Zealanders are coping with technological encroachment despite a deep sense of connection to the country’s natural beauty.

• Blue, Karma, Tiger, co-directors Mia Hulterstam and Cecilia Actis interview three young, female graffiti artists.

• Samantha Moore’s The Beloved Ones is an intimate portrait of two African women living with the repercussions of AIDS.

• Davina Pardo revisits one of her famous father’s unfinished animations in Birdlings Two.

• In The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, Gerrit van Dijk presents an abstract interpretation of a gangster’s final words (voiced by Rutger Hauer) from his deathbed.

• In Jeanne Paturle’s and Cécile Rousset’s One Voice, One Vote, two strangers come together on the eve of a major election to discuss their personal connection to voting.

• In Learned By Heart, Marjut Rimminen and Paivi Takala explore the secret history of Finland’s post-World War II legacy.

• In Sold Out, Marie José van der Linden and Gerrit van Dijk depict a day in the life of a family of shopkeepers as a big-box store looms.

• In A Shift in Perception, Dan Monceaux gives three recently blinded women the opportunity to illustrate how their lives have changed.

• Maya Yonesho presents a microhistory of architectural destruction and creation in Vienna with Wiener Wuast.

• Emily Bissland’s In the Same Boat tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a racist Vietnam War vet and an Iraqi refugee who meet while hospitalized.

• Eric Ledune’s Do It Yourself is a wildly funny take on a found CIA manual’s step-by-step instructions on how to torture and kill.

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