Flux - Short Takes

TAKE ONE, Dec, 2002 by Tom McSorley

2002 8m prod NFB, p Marcy Page, d/an/sc Chris Hinton, ed Hannele Halm, mus Lance Neveu.

Are male animators at the NFB having mid-life crises? Given the anxieties evident about aging and parenting in recent films from the storied Film Board, such as Cordell Barker's Strange Invaders and now Chris Hinton's Flux, it looks like the terror of time's finitude is a cold stare coming out of their animation stands. In Hinton's latest, we witness the passages of two generations of a squiggly family's life in just under eight minutes: childhood and parenthood, adolescence and leaving home, death and burial, and a return to parenthood and childhood by the next generation. Rendered in a kinetic stylistic combination of childlike line drawings and splotches, not unlike the work of Paul Driessen, Hinton's energetic and amusing work expresses the awkwardness, fear and odd joys of life's temporary and chaotic journey. It's not a new idea, certainly, but it is timeless. Of course, we all know that life is hard and then you die. As Flux ably demonstrates, however, that doesn't mean you can't go down swinging. For its anarchic and arresting animation style, Flux captured the award for Best Narrative Short Film under 40 Minutes at the recent Ottawa 2002 International Animation Festival.