Death is Smoking My Cigars

A Child's Garden of Poetry

Poems by some of the greatest writers of all time are brought to life through lyrical animation and readings by some of today’s most respected performers.

Ego Sum Petrus

Peninsula

A giant woman wakes up on a pastel-coloured island where small yellow creatures harvest carrots. She seems too big for this world. Every step of her giant feet threatens to destroy a vegetable patch or hurt someone. Searching for a more suitable place to live she finally finds out where she belongs.

The Spring Night

A spring night is a poetic film which is based on the motives of the poem by V. Lugovsky. The film is devoted to the theme of fidelity to the battle traditions of revolutionary past, to the theme of human happiness the sense of it in the battle for high ideals.

Trans Boy Remember

At the age of 9, I stopped speaking. It's the year I broke from the inside, raped. I came out as a trans boy years later. I am often afraid of becoming a man who I might confuse for the one who hounded my body. This film is a poem, this film is about growing into the unknown.

Here: A Visual Poem

An experimental visual poem combining film, animation, photography, and archival footage inviting people to occupy the Black Body and examine the lived Black experience for a brief moment.

Two Faces

Loose impressionistic brushstrokes sketch a series of portraits of two faces, one male and one female, while the verse on the soundtrack tells the tale of both one and a thousand relationships.

Lines

Six poems written by six young prisoners animated to tell their stories, thoughts, fears and hopes.

The Blue Years

Rubén tries to describe the color blue as "The color of dreams, of art, of the ocean and of the firmament", thereby unleashing half a century of poetry.

Night on the Galactic Railroad

Giovanni currently lives a dreary life of near non-stop work. At school, his peers ridicule him incessantly, and his employer at work is distant and cold. As his isolation from society becomes unbearable, he suddenly finds himself on a train heading far away from his miserable home. Accompanied by Campanella, an acquaintance from school, Giovanni embarks on a journey that will define the rest of his life.

Synapses

Réne Manzor's debut short, a surreal story about a tramp trying to build a road through the desert.

A Thousand and One Nights

Five different exploits of Sinbad the sailor where he gets mixed up with the pretty daughters of exotic potentates, with powerful monsters that threaten his existence, and with all sorts of teeming jungle life.

Groter dan je bent

Rosaura

This film visualizes humanity’s quest to relentlessly pursue goals. In the human fight for progress, the march forward cannot be stopped, even when individual people become weary and die. This animated short is based on a poem by the Chilean filmmaker and poet Juan Forch. Chilean painter Hernando León created the design.

The Pigeon Cree

A pastel animation produced by Sheila Graber and based upon the short story by Sid Chaplin. Narrated by north east broadcaster Mike Neville the film tells the story of Geordie, a miner, and his love for his pigeons and the trials and tribulations of his passion which is very popular around the region. The face of Sid Chaplin is used as Geordie.

Unmistaken Hands: Ex Voto F.H.

In a realm beyond the senses, plants interact with surreal cinematography to chart the course of our character: an entity said to embody the life and work of Felisberto Hernández, Uruguayan father of magical realism. Through this journey, we are confronted with an open-ended experience questioning the nature of musicality versus cinematography, entity versus aberration, and self versus space, in a self-referential, blurry, digital and mystical setting.

The Young Lady and the Cellist

A cellist attempts to rescue a woman swept out to sea, only to find he must battle a series of overly possesive sea creatures.

相思（上）

The View

A diary of a boy grappling with identity, love and belonging while exploring our fragile journey through a chaotic world.

Tournoi

Based on abstract images by Kamler, Andre Voisin and Francois Bayle imagined the story of a messenger charged to bring to our planet the key to a forgotten wisdom.