Adam Elliot
The world of a lonely deaf Parisian taxidermist is turned upside down and back to front when a dead pigeon arrives on his doorstep.
A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York. In the mid-1970s, a homely, friendless Australian girl of 8 picks a name out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him; she includes a chocolate bar. He writes back, with chocolate. Thus begins a 20-year correspondence. Will the two ever meet face to face?
Harvie Krumpet is the biography of an ordinary man seemingly cursed with perpetual bad luck. From being born with Tourette's Syndrome, to getting struck by lightning; from having his testicle removed to developing Alzheimer's disease; Harvie's troubles seem unending! Yet, Harvie learns many lessons in life and enjoys its many fruits. He finds love, freedom, nudity and ultimately the true meaning.
Adam looks back, with affection, to his childhood in a small suburban house, with his mum, his crippled and alcoholic dad, their bird Jeanette, and his older brother, who wears an eye patch, has asthma, and gets blamed for things even when he's not around. The boys are boon companions, swiping money from their napping dad and heading for Ruby's store to buy lollies. They draw, collect cans, and watch the brother's pet lizard eat flies (occasionally giving it a snail). Adam's brother has a collection of cigarette butts, and he has a dream: to be an acrobat like their father was before his accident. Can dreams come true?
Adam tells us the story of an older cousin, who had cerebral palsy. Adam would go over to play, and they'd dress as superheroes, jump off the shed, and run about the the street with an old shopping trolley. Adam explains his cousin's wayward left arm, his strong right one, his aunt's understanding of her son's rages ("bake a cake," she'd tell him), and the boy's love of swimming. On Adam's eighth birthday, the cousins are separated by tragedy; it's left to Adam to wonder about his cousin, and if he still smells of licorice.
Adam Elliot's earliest film, Human Behavioral Case Studies, is a drawn animation rather than claymation like his other films. It's about unusual human behaviors or obsessions. At only a minute long, it's just long enough to be memorably, darkly amusing.
