Anita Lebeau’s Big Drive to screen in Winnipeg and Vancouver this spring

When I was a kid and my parents would take us on road trips to visit with my cousins, down in the States, my brother and I would always get into the worse fights. Between the are-we-there-yet’s and the mommy-I-gotta-pee’s, being stuck in the back of a car with my brother was the fastest way for both of us to slip into the worse The Shining-style cabin fever (car fever?) ever, and before we’d hit the American border, one of us was for sure bruised and/or screaming like a banshee and/or sobbing hot tears. And that’s with a tall tower of pillows separating us.

Anita Lebeau’s animated short Big Drive, which will soon open across festivals in Canada, revisits some of these same “road trip of doom” themes, but in the charming context of the Canadian prairies of the 1970s. In this case, it is 4 sisters that are squeezed into the back of a car for a family trip. (Imagine the hair-pulling.) What at first seems promised to become a terribly bad situation takes a turn for the better when the sisters decide to combine efforts and creative energies to transform their day into an even bigger adventure.

The film will be shown at the Freeze Frame Festival in Winnipeg (March 3-12, 2011), and at Vancouver’s the Reel 2 Real (April 9-15, 2011), but in the mean time, check out the clip below for a quick taste. So drive safe everyone. (And NO FIGHTING!)