RISD's 1997 Senior Film, Animation and Video Festival

An animated film about a salt shaker and his pesky sidekick, a battery. A documentary about an eccentric ex-firefighter/world-class fencing instructor. A series of shorts, each title beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. If nothing else, the 20 works featured in this weekend's Rhode Island School of Design's Senior Film Animation and Video Festival are unique.

Frequently self-indulgent, often poorly paced and edited, and sometimes a tad incoherent, the films are nonetheless consistently intriguing. Each short movie also provides a glimpse at the potential of a young, up-and-coming filmmaker.

The culmination of three years of study in either film, animation, or video, these degree-projects by RISD seniors range from experimental to narrative to personal documentary. The animated films, however, stand out most for their creativity, humor and technical skill.

Angus MacLane's 10-minute silent black and white cartoon, Salt and Battery, is the funniest of the lot. A humble, well-behaved salt shaker tries to enjoy an airplane ride. Unfortunately, he's got the fidgety and clumsy battery sitting to his left. Eventually, Battery's antic are enough to drive Salt out of the airplane where he falls onto an outdoor "Slugs for Sale" shop.

In terms of artistry, though, Andrew Ristaino's five-minute animation, Invasion, stands out. Set against a sharply sketched city of deep gold, brown and red buildings, the film depicts green aliens taking over the planet while a puppet Bill Clinton repeatedly tells a brain-dead television audience, "All is well."

Other entrees in the festival include: Kerstin Stock's Love, Marriage, and Airplanes, a documentary that blends a look at the airline industry with the marriage of her parents (a pilot and flight attendant); Yee Woo Kim's Merry Christmas, a love story about a an old postal worker who reads the letters a lonely woman has sent to her dead husband; Yukari Tasaka's Letter to a Best Friend, an experimental open letter from the filmmaker to a confidante; Takeshi Murata's Made in the Shade, an animated collection of quick, absurd random scenes; C.C. Treadway's Journey to Utopia, a darkly comic personal documentary about the filmmaker's penchant for choosing the wrong men; Rebecca Gwynne's One for All, a loving portrait of a fencing coach and the Olympic athlete he inspired; and Andrew Freiband's 26 Movies, an eclectic bunch of short films including the filmmaker's attempt to interview fellow students about Cold War while continually spilling his coffee.

The Senior Film Animation and Video Festival runs through Saturday at 7 p.m. at the RISD Auditorium, North Main Street, Providence. Tickets: $4 ($2 students and seniors). Call 454-6233.

-- Mark Bazer