This is a short, animated retelling of the fable by Aesop. The sun shows the North wind that it’s easier to get people to do what you want by persuasion than by force. The illustrations are nice, and the music is unobjectionable. It’s a bit moralistic (as is the point of Aesop’s fables), but I remember loving these simple morals when I was a kid (and not understanding why my parents didn’t find them as convincing as I did!)
Age: 2+
Child rating: 8/10
Adult rating: 8/10
Running time: 3 minutes
Available: free on the NFB website
This wintery story is based on a book by Canadian/American author Dayal Kaur Khalsa, adapted by Tim Wynne-Jones and animated by Sheldon Cohen. A grandmother tells her young grand-daughter the tale of Elsie, who lives alone in a cabin near the woods, and longs for a companion. Elsie makes friends with a magical snow cat and an injured goose, and comes to find comfort and companionship in nature and the cyclical return of the seasons. This story can certainly be taken at face value, as a magical tale, but it is also about coming to terms with loss, change, and death – and indeed Khalsa wrote the book as she was coming to terms with her own diagnosis of breast cancer. (M., looking over my shoulder says “it’s sad because the cat melts,” but that it is nice when that cat returns as a cat-shaped pond.)
This is a beautiful cutout animation by Canadian director Gayle Thomas, made entirely of paper snowflakes. It’s wordless, accompanied by gentle steel pan drum music.
This is a bright and cheerful version of the Christmas story, with luminously painted zinc foil cutout animation against a black background by Evelyn Lambart. The story is told wordlessly with a celebratory renaissance-style soundtrack by Karl Duplessis.
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