Short Film: Cousin by Adam Elliot

If you haven't heard of Adam Elliot yet, you might soon. Currently living in Melbourne, Australia, with his partner Dan Doherty, he was born down under on 2 January 1972, where he eventually went to the Victorian College of the Arts to study animation.

His first short film, Uncle (1996), the first of a trilogy of narratives based on his family, won an Australian Film Institute award, as did both the follow-up films in the series, Cousin (1998) and Brother (1999). Indeed, Adam’s films have collectively won over 100 awards at the 500-plus film festivals where they’ve been screened, and it is easy to understand why. In 2003, his 23-minute-long claymation film Harvie Krumpet won an Academy Award in 2003 and in 2009 Mary & Max, his first feature-length (and extremely idiosyncratic) animation film (trailer), was selected as the opening film at Sundance.
His animation films are beautifully made, technically charming reflections of aspects of private lives that generally go unnoticed or ignored. A far cry from Saturday morning television in very sense, they are quirky, cute, tragic, funny, poignant and charming. Here is Cousin, the second of his family trilogy. It has been chosen to be featured not because it is the "best" of the three – indeed, they are all equally great – but simply because it is the first of his films that I had the pleasure of seeing.