Nine Nation Animation

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More About

• Chris Ware
• Bamiyan
• The Taliban
• Hello Kitty

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The kids can have Tangled, but the 85-minute compilation Nine Nation Animation offers grown-ups a superior array of cartoon styles. From Turkey, Average 40 Matches uses stop-motion to render a kitchen-table rebellion, in which matchsticks endeavor to light a cigarette without benefit of human hands. The lovely and affecting Home Road Movies, from Britain, uses CG and motion-capture in a hybrid recollection of happy European family vacations; the colors are those of faded postcards and snapshots you might find in shoeboxes after your parents have died. Bâmiyân, from France, is all daubed paint and mythology, as different voices try to explain how the famous Afghan Buddha statues were created—then destroyed by the Taliban. Certainly the most modern work is Please Say Something (Ireland/Germany), created entirely by computer in a style suggesting Hello Kitty meets ’80s videogames meets Chris Ware. The same couple, a cat and mouse, has their love tested by illness, work, car wrecks, miscommunication, and windstorms suggesting old TV test patterns. The 23 vignettes, each 25 seconds long, are captured as if by surveillance camera. It’s like every possible permutation of a wavering marriage or relationship—possibly yours—compressed into 10 minutes. (NR) BRIAN MILLER
Jan. 1-6, 7 & 9 p.m., 2011