:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Monday, April 25, 2005 ::

Inspirational International

Went to the Inspirational International screening at the Animated Encounters yesterday and saw some great animation (and so very odd animation). A quick overview of my favourites below.

David Wachtenheim & Robert Marianetti's Saddam and Osama is an absolutely hilarious satire of US foreign policy and the supposed connection between their two greatest enemies. Please, please, someone put this on UK TV. The song is still stuck in my head.

Sejong Park's Birthday Boy is worthy of mention for its sound design alone. There is a level of experimentation that you wouldn't hear on any other visual media these days (one of the things missing from the new Dr Who as there is no Radiophonic Workshop to provide this). The pretentious bit: I love the way animation as a medium can so easily transcend cultural and language barriers. (Even the Gorillas at Longleat Safari Park prefer cartons to anything else on TV!).

Grey Holfeld's Get In The Car is an all too familiar autobiographically story about a family car trip, with a moose in it (twice), and that alone makes it worthy of mention. It also has great sound, with good use of musical phrases in place of speech (ala Peanuts) and cunning use of car radio voiceover spoken credits.

Bill Plympton's Guard Dog is a brilliant look inside the head of a dog that barks at everything. Exactly how does a mole bear a threat to its owner? Of course, it's dug a huge mantrap with a raging bull in the bottom and a Ronald McDonald costume for him to fall into on the way down. The dog is brilliantly drawn, and the frozen expression of horror whenever it spots a "threat" is priceless.

Blur Studio provided two computer animated shorts, both very funny. The first, In The Rough, is a nicely realised caveman adventure with some good slapstick carton violence. The second, Gopher Broke, (despite being a little blurry and out of focus here) is probably the funniest in the line-up, with a brilliant dream sequence and the best slow-mo impending doom scene I've seen in ages.

Finally, a few words on Ryan, Chris Landreth's biopic (bioani?) of Canadian animation legend Ryan Larkin. The mix of drawing styles used here is huge. The clips of Larkin's films showed how great an influence he was (I think Sesame Street would have looked very different without him). And the layered metaphor in the contorted surrealist way the modern day characters are drawn is inspired, with nods to Dali's crutched figures and Magritte's The Son of Man (the one with the bloke with an apple in front his face). This could possibly have as great an influence on a generation as Larkin did 30 years ago.

This was the only screening of the festival I made it to, although Dash attended a few others and all of the workshops. Some of his views here.

:: Dan 25.4.05 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post]    ::
...

Links to this post:

<\$BlogBacklinkControl\$> <\$BlogBacklinkTitle\$> <\$BlogBacklinkDeleteIcon\$>

<\$BlogBacklinkSnippet\$>
posted by <\$BlogBacklinkAuthor\$> \@ <\$BlogBacklinkDateTime\$>

<\$BlogItemBacklinkCreate\$>