Video short animation "SOMNIUM" by Jasmin Morvan, Greta Pepler, Gerard Seymour, Pieter Louw, Eben de Waal and Riaan Scholtz

Watch "SOMNIUM" (5:00 minutes) students in South Africa, created an award winning short film about a world where order suppresses independent thought, and so a young girl uses her creativity to break free from the oppressive societal system.

By Jasmin Morvan, Greta Pepler, Gerard Seymour, Pieter Louw, Eben de Waal and Riaan Scholtz

A student film made at 'The Animation School' in Capetown and Johannasburg South Africa

Winner 2014 Silver World Medal for Student Film at New York Festivals

 Image Credit

Video animation "Dark Side" by Daoyi Liu, Lloyd Wilgen, Louwrens Hattingh, Johanny De Wet and Gavin Sher

Watch "Dark Side" (5:20 minutes) short film created by five students in South Africa, a beautifully imaged film that is a cautionary tale about "thinking before you act" - that harming someone due to fear of their difference is simply fear of their uniqueness. An Alien living on and exploring an other Alien's world becomes scared and overwhelmed by the beauty, kindness and peace of the Indigenous life native to the new world. Someone, or something, is different because they are unique - their beauty is deeply etched in what makes them uniquely different. YouTube viewing link

By Daoyi Liu, Lloyd Wilgen, Louwrens Hattingh, Johanny De Wet and Gavin Sher
A student film made at 'The Animation School' in Capetown and Johannasburg South Africa

 Image Credits

Video animation short "Wing It" by Jeanelize de Nys, Shani Campbell, Thea de Klerk, Kelly Walker, Shane Marks and Barry de Jager

Watch "Wing It" (8 minutes) award winning short film created by six students in South Africa, about a human obsessed with flying. After failed attempts to build a flying machine, and being ridiculed by the media, Sherman draws strength from the memories of his father to decide to Never Give Up. A group of Earth-friendly aliens, who have assisted in the creation of previous Earth interventions, decide to help. Two young alien recruits, Sizzle and Spark, are sent on their first mission and, while all does not go to plan, their clumsy attempt brings about a surprising result. YouTube viewing link

The idea for the short first came about when The Animation School final-year students Shani Campbell and Jeanelize de Nys started brainstorming ideas for a group project. “As two heads are always better than one, Jeanelize and I collaborated on two story concepts. In January this year the two of us sat in my back garden, where gradually ideas began to take shape. Wing It – or Anonymous Interventions, as it was originally called – very quickly became our favourite story." The first seed of inspiration for the story came from Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘Elves and the Shoemaker’. Jeanelize and Shani really liked the idea of an anonymous intervention helping someone in need. - Description from Kelly Walker, filmmaker

By Jeanelize de Nys, Shani Campbell, Thea de Klerk, Kelly Walker, Shane Marks and Barry de Jager

 A student film made at 'The Animation School' in Capetown and Johannasburg South Africa

Image Credits

Video short animation "Inside" by Rok Predin

Watch "Inside" (1:30 minutes) a short film imagining what is inside the every day things around us that we come into contact with daily. Not everything is what it seems, it is always more than what it first seems. Appearances can be deceiving, if we do not look below the surface to what is at the heart of the matter - or what is in the heart.
(non-offical YouTube)

Directed by Rok Predin
Rok graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana Slovenia in 2005. After touring Europe in bands playing everywhere from back room bars to stadiums, he began to experiment with animation as a tool to tell abstract stories, mixing sound and imagery together. He has created award winning projects for himself, Elton John, Madness, Keith Urban and The Rolling Stones

Music by Ivan Arnold
Ivan is a Croatia based composer who works mainly in film, television and theatre. Although focused on orchestral writing, he arranges music in various styles - either acoustic and electronic. As a composer and orchestrator, he has worked on a variety of multi award winning projects.

Image Credits

Video short animation "Injunuity" directed by Adrian Baker

Watch "Injunuity" (29:30 minutes)
On the web series"Injunuity" is a collage of reflections on the Native American world, our shared past, our turbulent present, and our undiscovered future.

Vision Maker Media: Native Stories for Public Broadcasting
Watch individual videos on ITVS YouTube Channel

Artist Filmmaker Credits

From Columbus to the western expansion to tribal casinos, we are taught that the Native way, while at times glorious, is something of the past, something that needed to be replaced by a manifest destiny from across the ocean. But in a world increasingly short of real answers, it is time we looked to Native wisdom for guidance. It is time for some Injunuity.

Injunuity is a mix of animation, music, and real thoughts from real people exploring our world from the Native American perspective. Every word spoken is verbatim, every thought and opinion is real, told in nine short pieces and covering such topics as language preservation, sacred sites, and the environment. But rather than simply revisit our history, the goal of Injunuity is to help define our future, to try and figure out the path that lies before us, to focus on where we are going as well as where we have been.

Image Credits

Video short film "Give us back our shadows" by Maria Korporal

Watch "Give us back our shadows"  (6:45 minutes) “An old Native American legend tells that an insect stole the shadow of those who did not respect Nature. Deprived, in this way, of their soul, the men became ill. Only with music and singing they were able to finally get their shadow back and live happily ever after.”

The video is part of the project Korporal Zoo, a series of movies which deal with the relationship between animals and human beings studied from several prospectives: cultural, social, environmental.

Directed by Maria Korporal

Maria Korporal YouTube Channel

Directed by Maria Korporal

Il video fa parte del ciclo Korporal Zoo: una serie di video che trattano il rapporto tra animali e esseri umani da diversi punti di vista – culturale, sociale, ambientale.

“Un’antica leggenda degli Indiani d’America narra che un insetto rubasse l’ombra a chi non rispettava la natura. Privati così della propria anima, gli uomini si ammalavano. Solo con la musica e con il canto riuscivano infine a riaverla e a vivere felici.”

 Image Credits: Maria Korporal

Video short documentary film "Animals Are Persons" and "The Nonhuman Rights Projects"

Watch "Animals Are Persons Too" (6:39 minutes) documentary follows lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans. The Nonhuman Rights Project

Produced by: Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker for 'The New York Times Videos'

What is 'The Nonhuman Rights Project'
The NhRP is unlike any other organization in the world. Why? Because we’re the only group fighting for actual LEGAL rights for members of species other than our own. The way our law currently categorizes animals is wrong; it’s time for that to change.

The NhRP was founded in 2007 by attorney Steven M. Wise, and is made up of dozens of smart, committed, and hard-working people from many backgrounds.

We have come together for one clear purpose: to break through the legal wall that separates humans from nonhumans, thereby gaining legal “personhood” for nonhuman animals, beginning with some of the most intelligent animals on earth, like chimpanzees, elephants and dolphins.

These are complex animals who have deep emotions, understand each others’ minds, live in complicated societies, transmit culture, use sophisticated communication, solve difficult problems, and even mourn the loss of their loved ones. Just like humans.

But they are still considered property, poached and taken from their natural habitat, separated and held against their will, subjected to cruel experimentation, exploited for entertainment, sold on the black market, used, abused and treated like objects for our amusement and financial gain. These experiences scar them for life.

Only the law can stop it. Yet the law affords them no rights, allowing humans to do with them whatever we want.
This is illogical, unnatural and unethical.

The Nonhuman Rights Project is preparing to litigate the first groundbreaking legal cases intended to knock down the wall that separates humans from nonhumans.

Once this wall is breached, the first nonhuman animals on earth will gain legal “personhood” and finally get their day in court — a day they so clearly deserve."

Image Credits: The Nonhuman Rights Project

Video short animation: "Leucotopia" directed by Céline Hermann, Mehdi Louala, Geoffrey Godet, Nicolas Lejeune and Simon Legrand

Watch "Leucotopia" on (Vimeo)  or (YouTube) a 9 minute short metaphor for life ... what is inside each one of us that drives a Being to want to connection to more peace. This story, "a giant blue man driven by headless chickens drives his own journey on the path of life. Un géant bleu conduit par des poulets sans tête sur le chemin de la vie."

Directed by Mehdi Louala , Geoffrey Godet , Nicolas Lejeune and Céline Hermann

A student graduation film made at Superinfocom in France

Image Credits / Website

Video short animation "Seed" by Saerom Seong

Watch "Seed" (3 min) story about life cycles and the cycles of life.

2014 student film made at School of Visual Arts in New York City

Directed by Saerom Seong

Video TED Talk "Indigenous Knowledge" by Caleen Sisk and Marc Dadigan

Watch TED Talk "Indigenous Knowledge" by Caleen Sisk (13 minutes) Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe (California) is interviewed by Marc Dadigan, a freelance writer and photographer who has worked as an immersion journalist at the Winnemem Wintu's village of Tuiimyali (California).

Caleen Sisk is the Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe (California) who practice their traditional culture and ceremonies in their territory along the McCloud River watershed in Northern California. Since assuming leadership responsibilities in 2000, Caleen has focused on maintaining the cultural and religious traditions of the Tribe as well as advocating for California salmon restoration, the Human Right to Water, and the protection of indigenous sacred sites.

She is also currently leading her Tribe's efforts to work with Maori and federal fish biologists to return Chinook salmon to the McCloud River.

Caleen is also a leading voice in raising awareness of the poor human rights conditions suffered by federally unrecognized tribes and unrepresented indigenous peoples around the world.

She is a regular speaker at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York where she has campaigned for the U.N. to study the plight of federally unrecognized tribes in the United States.

She is also the Spiritual and Environmental Commissioner for ENLACE Continental, an international network of indigenous women.

Strongly rooted in her spirituality and her family, Caleen cares deeply for her Winnemem people and for oppressed people around the world.

Affirm Water Rights

Video short film "Valley of Dolls" / "Im Tal der Puppen" by Fritz Schumann

Watch" Valley of Dolls" 6 minute film about Ayano Tsukimi an artist living in Nagoro, a village in eastern Iya on Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan. Not many people still live there, many have died or moved away. Ayano Tsukimi creates life-sized dolls in their likeness, placing the dolls in locations which were important to those who have transitioned away. The dolls are scattered around the whole valley.

Director, photographer, journalist of Berlin, Germany: Fritz Schumann

Im Tal der Puppen" Ayano Tsukimi (64) lebt in Nagoro, einem Dorf im östlichen Iya-Tal auf Shikoku, eine der vier Hauptinsel von Japan. Nur noch wenige Menschen leben hier. Für die Bewohner, die sterben oder wegziehen, fertigt Ayano Tsukimi lebensgrosse Puppen an und stellt sie an den Orten auf, die für diese Menschen wichtig waren. Ihre Puppen findet man verteilt im ganzen Tal. Sie ist verheiratet, ihr Mann und ihre Tochter leben aber getrennt von ihr in Osaka. Mit ihrem 83 jährigen Vater lebt sie alleine im Haus ihrer Familie.

Image Credit: Fritz Schumann