A revelatory history of American division through the prism of two ships once widely used as symbols in the war of ideas between North and South—a struggle whose echoes remain with us today. In the bitterly polarized decades leading up to the American Civil War, it was commonplace to argue that America’s strife could be traced back to the arrival of two ships, less than a year apart—The White Lion, which brought the first enslaved Africans to Jamestown in 1619, and the Mayflower, which brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock in 1620.

Cartoon Contender speaks with McKinley Benson about his Oscar-eligible animated short, Two Ships.

Here are some of my favorites (so far) of the animated films at HollyShorts Film Festival. Animated films at festival range in style and theme, yet they are ...