The Hyde Tube Festival was a treasure that I stumbled upon completely by accident, a mere few hours before it was due to start, via the magic of Twitter. Lured by an intriguing website and the knowledge that it was on for one night only, I made sure I grabbed a ticket.

The festival is one of those rare examples in the film world of public meets industry. Film festivals usually tend to be geared more towards one audience than the other, but in this case, I really couldn’t decide where its allegiances lay – and I am pleased to say that I left satisfied on both a personal and professional level. Let me explain: it claims to be an all night gothic-style carnival of animation entertainment and certainly lived up to this promise – entering Paris’ famous La Pagode cinema, I was greeted by hostesses bedecked in top and tails and a genuine gypsy band playing in full throe. Before the films began we were treated to some cabaret by a singing dwarf and a larger lady whose breasts were covered by a bikini made of two eye-shaped discs. Eyes indeed were a running theme of the festival – the subtitle is ‘All you need are eyes’, and eyeballs are scattered across the predominantly black promotional material. However, as the show began, the evidence was mounting that this was something more than one of the hundreds of semi-professional short film festivals that Paris spoils its inhabitants with every year. Firstly, we were treated to one of the most impressive idents I think I’ve ever seen open a film festival:

and I quickly spotted an extremely high-powered international judging panel were listed on the programme, comprising buyers from renowned TV channels, as well as heads of production companies, distribution labels, and representatives from advertising agencies.

On a subsequent fuller examination, I learned that the Hyde Tube’s raison d’etre was to showcase rising directing/animating talent, and to link these individuals up with interested commissioners from ad agenices and production companies. Their method is both rather cryptic and innovative – they don’t give you the full names of any of the directors (and encourage the artists to remove them from the credits) so that commissioners are forced to pass by ‘Mr Hyde’ to organise a commission.

Essentially this is a great idea (if not foolproof, as often Googling the film’s title leads you straight to a director’s website which facilitates direct contact) because there is a huge amount of talent out there, and a lot of money waiting to be spent by ad agencies and other production companies, and yet there is a lack of structured communication between the two. Unless you have secured yourself an agent, or you’ve been signed to a production company, the process of commissioning can be both intimidating for directors and riddled with the potential to be taken advantage of, in the interests of increasing your chances of receiving a better paid commission afterwards…

So, the concept is good, but what about the content?

The festival itself was divided into three parts: 50 minutes of 2D, then 3D, then a mix. I caught the first section (2D) and was pleasantly surprised to find a really high quality and enjoyable collection.

The Can was a particularly inventive animation from Carlos Lascano about a man who is glueing posters to walls and who observes their characters come to life and interact with each other. Narratively it’s very charming, while aesthetically the colours are rich and the images have a lovely sketchy texture. The worlds of art and commerce collide once again as this piece was produced for a project organised by Red Bull with the University of Applied Arts in Vienna – consequently we do indeed see a little product placement. For more of Lascano’s work you can check out his Short Love Story in Stop Motion.

Next up was Forget – a music video for Vania and the Master by ‘Mr Fragstein, Mrs Oliveira and Mr Reichartz’. Mrs Oliveira ia indeed Vania – and she was absolutely involved in the creation of the animation. It was actually championed by Kanye West on his blog in May (if his opinion on animation interests you) although it made its first theatrical début at the Hyde Tube Festival. Architecture and design graduate Fragstein speaks a little about its genesis in the comment thread on Vimeo here where he explains that he did the video as a distraction from drawing doors and windows all day long, and it appears that the deluge of positive comments have persuaded him to do even more animation, which I will eagerly await to see.

Obras by Lorenzo Petrantoni was another highly skilled monochrome piece set to the Waltz made famous by Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

Stagger Lee was a work in progress music video by Milo Waterfield using the music of the Marseille Figs (over 200 interpretations of the story’s song have been recorded to date). Set in a St Louis bar-room in 1895, the story centres on the tale of the notorious ‘Stag’ Lee Shelton, who shot a certain Billy Lyons after the latter stole his Stetson Hat. Meanwhile, Le Trésor de Thérèse (French version watchable and downloadable from the site here) by Cedric Villain was a charming piece produced in conjunction with the ‘Défidéfou’ competition run by the excellent Fous d’anim animation resource. Last year’s theme (for their 13th edition) was fear of the number 13, while you can find out more about this year’s project – based on Alice in Wonderland – here.

Chimpan-Alley was a short and sweet piece by Robert Greives and Tom Munday which pans along an apparently normal 1950s London street, which becomes increasing abnormal as we witness that all our human characters have the heads of animals.

Whilst the highly accomplished Mr Cok by Franck Dion (viewable on their website here) took home the best 2D animation award, my personal trophy would have gone to Christophe Blanc’s Super, which was both well animated and very witty. His seven minute short film – which is viewable in seven one-minute versions on his website (alas non-embeddable) – had the audience, including myself, in stitches, with its slightly less than ‘super’ hero. Definitely worth a visit to the website here.

I can only imagine that the 3D and mixed sections were equally stimulating, although I’m glad I focused in on the 2D as that’s generally where I find the greatest imagination, whereas 3D animation is all starting to look a little bit the same. In any case, I would encourage you to decide for yourself as clips from most participating films are available on their website here.