Digitalis

Animate Projects Digitalis strand was celebrated at BFI Southbank with a screening and discussion.  I made some discreet analogue impressions on my knee whilst the discussion was taking place.

Here is Gary Thomas asking some penetrating questions of Max Hattler (directly below) and James Lowne (at the bottom).  Max Hattler dosn't look like this.

The fourth panellist was Emma Geliot, who I couldn't quite see. (I bet she's glad!)

The screening was of films conceived for an online exhibition or platform, and to be obtuse straight away, it was a relief to see the films in the cinema.  My commitment to animated short film is considerable and attention span OK, but I hadn't been inclined to see them through to the end when I saw them online.  I think Max Hattler is on top of all this.  His films 1923 aka Heaven (1'49") and 1925 aka Hell (1'36") can be joined half way through and seen on a loop, this is perhaps because his reference points are not filmic, but musical, and the 'digital' is responsible for bringing him to make short films.  His films were mesmerising, though aka Hell was a little bit like being swallowed by one of the x-men.

 James Lowne is a filmmaker who uses 3D technology to enjoy the act of fabricating personas and  menacing situations for them to inhabit.  They are roughly hewn, and have tics and imperfections.  His inspiration springs from fashion photography and advertising, he also had lots of sensible thoughts to add to the discussion.

The discussion around the 'digital' focused on two issues, which Emma Geliot articulated well. That of digital platforms; the ability for artists to show their work to the millions worldwide on the internet, whether it be for promotion, or like Max Hattler, putting the whole lot online and it not having done any harm to his profile, and then the ability to create work in a cheap and easy way from the bedroom.

All the works screened were created by digital means to a greater or lesser degree for a digital platform, and they were all good films, but I wasn't convinced that the digital tools are being used with proper thought, or to their full potential yet.  Maybe it's a quiet revolution, or perhaps the definition of work as 'digital' is creating false expectations.

The Animals and Children took to the Streets

1927  are performing their new show The Animals and Children Took to the Streets at the Cottesloe Theatre.  Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt combine the excitement of live performance with the magic of animation so beautifully that the audience were chuckling with delight throughout, (especially the one's who got Granny's Gumdrops in green and white stripey bags). The show was 70 minutes long, and comprised of so many witty moments and clever references, both contemporary and all the way back to 1927. There were cockroaches scuttling up drainpipes and little puffs of animated dust in response to live action brooms, and the animated elevator took us to all the floors of the Bayou Mansions.  The performers were really engaging and so musical.  In short, it was really good.  I did have a small reservation with the structure which I can't quite articulate. I tried to imagine what's at the centre of it, without all the magic mentioned above, and I can't see a strong idea there, which is maybe what was missing.  Nonetheless, I urge you all to go (if you can get a ticket) and keep a close eye on 1927.

Baaa!

I was inspired to make a fifteen second animation for the BAA sting competition.  It just took two evenings and it's revolting, as you can see.

Punch & Judy

Today at Anglia Ruskin we looked at Swankmajer's Punch & Judy, 1966, 9'55",  as well as Cordell Barker's Runaway,2009, 9'10".
I was thinking about editing and Swankmajer has the magic.  Of course it's also hard to resist a film in which a guinea pig is pampered in turn by two violent puppets.  Cordell Barker's Runaway is a virtuosic piece of animation, it really rattles along, no baggy bits.  We also saw Wisdom Teeth, 2010, 5'55" by Don Hertzfeldt, one long, slightly shrill, crazy joke.

Hampstead Heath

or Hamster Teeth as it's known in our house.

Fairy tales

Here are some stills taken from four experimental sequences that I made in Vienna.  I'm going to start putting them together and re-filming some of them.  They are a little bit like performances, they get better every time I film them, and they're never the same twice.

Kerry Baldry's One Minute Vol. Programme

Kerry Baldry has programmed many volumes of one minute films, and she works hard to get them shown all over the place.  My Little Skipper (shown below) is happy to be included in Vol. 4, and it's going to showing with 3 & 5 in Sydney at Peloton this week and next. Thank you Kerry.

This was a little animation I made of Poppy and I a couple of summers ago, in Vienna. It's not rotoscoped, but I did use a video reference, sort of by eye.  I've been looking at my old hard drives and I was pleased to see that I'd saved more than I thought I had.

crobinson the pimp

is back.

More treasures

I've been teaching a little bit on this module at Anglia Ruskin this semester and I've really enjoyed thinking about films that the students and I can watch together.  Today we saw Yuri Norstein's film Tale of Tales, 27", 1979.  Voted as the 'best animated film of all time' by a poll at the Zagreb Animated Film Festival in 2002, I would have voted for it too.

I've seen it many times, (not as many times as Clare Kitson!) and it always seems different, both in structure and in the ideas suggested.  This time I noticed the rhythms of the movements that weave through the film, from the cradle, to the dancers, and the bull who flicks and turns the skipping rope.  It's so simple and so complicated all at once and has such sincerity, goodness, if I'd seen Tale of Tales as a student, maybe I would have felt a little bit daunted?

Last week we saw Ruth Lingford's Death and the Mother, 11", 1997.  It's based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale 'Story of a Mother'.  I've admired the wonderful animation, the spare design and the gravity of the film before, but I had forgotten how very sad it is.

Plot treasure and Autumn

We unearthed a lot of treasure from our allotment, not all of it edible.  Here it is washed and on display.

and here is Londonfields looking so splendid and golden this autumn.

Your favourite ever British Animated Character

This is quite a challenge. British Animation Awards are inviting nominations on the above topic.
I made my own shortlist and realised that it included many characters invented by Oliver Postgate including Jones the Steam from Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog.  The Sagas of Noggin the Nog, are perhaps less well-known of his creations but totally engrossing, with fantastic baddies, (Noggin's black-hearted Uncle Nogbad the Bad) and properly gripping sticky situations for Noggin, who is wise and trustworthy but innocent too.  You can buy the DVD here.

But in the end, I chose Nanny Plum from Ben and Holly. Oliver Postgate would win all five top slots for me if it were favourite series, but for favourite characters, faulty, irreverent, bossy Nanny Plum, voiced by Sarah Ann Kennedy is my role model at the moment, and she needs to be on that list.

Who are you going to chose?

( I forgot to add that you can see everyone's nominations here)

Museum of Childhood - Magic Worlds

©V&A images

This wonderful poster is called 'Dragon', it's by Wayne Anderson from 1974 and advertises an exhibition at the Museum of Childhood called Magic Worlds, on until 4th February 2012.  I've been. Oh yes. But I can't recall anything about the exhibition other than this beautiful fellow, because my young companions took it at such a lick.  I did note that the show was full of treasures and magic and I plan to visit a second time asap.

Forking Paths Mirrored Chambers

This is the title of a course about animation within Artist's Moving image led by Adam Pugh at Lux for Animate Projects.  I couldn't make every Wednesday but I was glad to get a slice of the action last week thanks to Kim's trip to Dublin.  I'm an animation anorak (DayGlo, sweaty) so this was pretty exciting.  Adam has done a lot of thinking and each week he leads the group through a screening of works on a theme, with many literary references and related thoughts to accompany the films that can be mulled over or read later.  The group seemed very sparkly and interesting too.  Last week was about space and place.  I especially enjoyed seeing Robert Breer's '69', 5", 1968 and Greg Pope's succinct film Moon Walk, 1", 2001.
Breer was brilliant to show in the context of other films relating to spaces and places because he is able to crisply delineates what space is and isn't, whilst also meddling with time in the same way.  It's so playful and simple and every time I watch it something else occurs to me.

A still from Robert Breer's '69'

Holkham

Happy Halloween.

We're ready, are you?

Animation and Laban

On Sunday I participated in one of Sarah Perry's unique workshops designed to equip animators with some awareness of movement and acting.  This workshop was based on Laban's effort's.  It was really interesting to try and analyse movement through trying it all out, in the company of other animators.

Pas the Pasol & Musucl Bums

We've been celebrating a special birthday here.  We made some wrapping paper for pass the parcel (or hold onto it if you can) with a brilliant set of rubber stamps I bought on ebay over the summer.   

F.Percy Smith

If you have half an hour to spare, there's a lovely BBC Radio 4 iplayer programme about F. Percy Smith called The Balancing Bluebottle.  I've mentioned him before in relation to the Watch Me Move show at the Barbican, where Birth of Flower (1910) was exhibited. The fantastic BFI archive has a few of his films online as well, this spidery one (using a mechanical fly) is really fantastic.  Percy Smith aims to "administer the powder of instruction within the jam of entertainment."  What a brilliant fellow he was, and a little bit eccentric too.

Wonders from the Zagreb School of Animation

A still from Tup Tup by Nedeljko Dragić (1972)

I was very pleased to be asked to introduce a programme of short films programmed by Aline Conti from the  Zagreb School of Animation showing today at the 31st Cambridge Film Festival.  At the microphone, I was obliged to confess straight away that I have no expertise in the area of Zagreb Animation, just a sturdy admiration.  I leapt at the chance to have a think about the films, relay my thoughts and the results of my research and sit in the dark and watch them all on the big screen.

The films screened were:

SAMAC (Alone) by Vatroslav Mimica, 13'09", 1958
SUROGAT (Ersatz) by Dušan Vukotić, 9'36", 1961
ZID (The Wall), 3'32", 1965
MUHA (The Fly) by Alexsandar Marks & Vladimir Jutriša, 8'16", 1966
MACKA (The Cat)by Zlatko Bourek, 10'10", 1971
TUP TUP by Nedeljko Dragić, 9'42", 1972
SATIEMANIA by Zdenko Gašparović, 14'15", 1978

A still from Muha (The Fly)
by Alexsandar Marks & Vladimir Jutriša (1966)

A still from Satiemania by Zdenko Gašparović (1978)

A still from Surogat (Ersatz) by Dušan Vukotić (1961)

The films were largely united in the use of a 'limited' style of cel animation, simple non-realistic design and movement, absence of  dialogue, brilliant experimental sound design and an anecdotal focus on the small man encountering difficulties in a big world.  My only reservation about the work was that occasionally these unsurmountable 'difficulties' were unresponsive women or fields of bosoms. (The films were all made by male animators.)


I really enjoyed MUHA (The Fly) by Alexsandar Marks & Vladimir Jutriša from 1966, it had a lovely circular narrative, extremely spare animation and some wonderful shots that were both uncanny and full of suspense.  TUP TUP by Nedeljko Dragić was a fantastic film, the way that his frustration was animated with such a light yet vigorous touch was so pleasurable to watch.  SUROGAT (Ersatz) by Dušan Vukotić was the first non US film to win an Oscar in 1962.  The design was splendid and the gags very clever, I especially enjoyed the way that he put his swimming trunks on with his head buried in the sand and his bottom in the air.  There's this brilliant humming tune, that's too catchy.  Watch it on you tube and see if you'll be humming it too. 

Animation Pimp

I'm reading Chris Robinson's Animation Pimp all in one go, like the Arnaldur Indriðason's that whizz in and out of Hackney library on my card.  His musings, rants, unvarnished self-revelatory details mostly relating to animation make for a unique experience for the animation community where everyone is generally kind about each other's films.  You spend a year in penury in the dark, it's hard for people to tell you directly that you've wasted your time.  I expect the outspoken nature of his writing gives him a bit of trouble, but whenever I've heard him spoken of, there's a touch of awe there too.  Sometimes I'd love to write gonzo fashion, as he does, but I'm not nearly macho enough to deal with the consequences. You can read the Pimp at AWN with comments and all and the Pimp is returning in the Autumn.

"Don't worry, it's just animation, it has no real effect on people"

It's  always a treat to finish the summer with a serious blast of animation at LIAF, which gets better and better every year.  It's lovely to catch up with old friends from near and afar and see so much great work.
The best films of the festival are shown on the last night, voted by the judges and audience votes, so it can lack the balance of a curated screening. This year the screening included some extraordinary works, but they were, without exception, expositions of bleak subjects (where were you Jonathan Jones?), they were, with one exception male, and they were all pretty long.  Get Real by Evert de Beijer immersed the viewer in a demented biro scribbled computer game, the characters and design were pretty unique. David O Reilly 's External World (quoted in post title) was perhaps my favourite because it's so nuts, all the characters are completely revolting to each other, greedy, acquisitive or in the grip of a little drama, but it is also clever and thoughtful in it's way, embracing both the past and future of animation without concession. The spectacular new work by Blu, Big Bang, Big Boom is impressive, the film visits the same subject as in Ishu Patel's Bead Game (1977), but the canvas is Berlin, not beads.  The technique has developed since the first film Muto, in that there are some interactions with objects and the environment, and in some cases people too.  The excellent stop motion animation Bobby Yeah! was there too!  Congratulations to Robert Morgan for winning Best British Animation.  I did feel truly sick and wretched by the end, all that corned beef and toenails, and poor old deranged and innocent Bobby, who is egged on to acts of extreme violence by the lure of a red button that he can't seem to resist. YEAH!

Bravo! Very Nice, Very Nice

In many ways Theodore Ushev and Arthur Lipsett are a perfect pair, but funnily enough Ushev's new film Lipsett Diaries isn't the most revealing part of their union.  Last week at LIAF, Ushev showed nearly all of his films, which were The Man who Waited (2006), Tower Bawher (2005), Drux Flux (2008), Tzaritza (2006), Yannick-Nezet- Seguin: No Intermission (2010) & Lipsett Diaries (2011).  What a daring and dynamic body of work and whilst he appropriates different styles and mediums, there's a strong graphic sensibility that is evident throughout.  As if watching most of Ushev's films wasn't exciting enough, he then presented the films of Arthur Lipsett.  Very Nice, Very Nice was made in 1961 when Lipsett was in his early 20's.  It's so beautifully and confidently assembled.  He used film scooped from the floor of the NFB and he cut together a collage of still images, the sound is key in creating the humour, although the films are very much political works, and evidently made by a melancholic.  Lipsett's films 21-87 (1964) Free Fall (1964) and A Trip Down Memory Lane (1965) followed. They are all worth watching on the NFB's digital archive, which is where I first came upon the films of Arthur Lipsett last year.

Theodore Ushev was brought to Lipsett by a series of coincidences, and Chris Robinson (Director of the Ottawa Animation Festival) joined him by writing a script that sprang from Lipsett's films.  There are no diaries.  Ushev has created the film using thousands of beautiful paintings, the impression is of great restlessness, which clearly chimes with the subject.  The film is very masterful and engaging, but I would tentatively suggest that seeing the work of Ushev and Lipsett together was thrilling enough, and I'm not sure what more Lipsett's Diaries was able to add.  Ushev hopes that a curiosity can be created about the overlooked Lipsett, and I'm sure that he will succeed. This film is sure to arouse that curiosity and also sure to enjoy as much success as his other works.

Marina Warner

photo by Kim Noce

Marina Warner gave a wonderful talk in the Barbican Art Gallery last week, in relation to the Watch me Move Show, specifically she was talking about the history of shadow play in relation to Lotte Reiniger, Kara Walker and William Kentridge.  Just as she does in her brilliant books, Marina Warner managed to both ground the subject of shadow in history and set it free to enjoy quite new associations, it was all in all, a very envigorating experience for the brain.

The Corinthian Maid or The Origin of Painting by Joseph Wright of Derby 1782
(NGA, Washington)

I'm still trying to put the pieces together myself, and this is a very limited account to help my memory and further thoughts.  She started with Joseph Wright of Derby's painting of Dibutades recording the sleeping silhouette of her lover, just before he departs on a perilous journey, with only a spear and a dog to protect him.
Philip James de Loutherberg was the creator of the Eidophusikon presented in Leicester square in 1781. This was a 6ft by 8ft miniature mechanical theatre in which lamps, pulleys and stained glass slides were used to recreate dramatic scenes from nature.  It must have been very exciting but certainly eclipsed by the "fantasmagorie" of Etienne Gaspard "Robertson" Robert which took place in the Capuchin Convent near the Place Vendome.  The residents and visitors to post-revolutionary Paris were delighted to be frightened out of their wits with his show which depicted ghosts and skeletons emerging from a lightening-filled sky.  He created these effects by using multiple projectors, a magic lantern on wheels, a waxed screen and eerie sound effects.
The shadow moved from mass entertainment to the home in the Victorian era, when there was a need to be seen to contain the fear and control the phantoms but also entertain all those children tumbling around the parlour.   It looked as if Dad got his scissors out and made shadows on the wall with the help of a candle.  This was also the time of Arthur Rackham, who used his scissors to make silhouettes as well as the wonderful drawings, this one below is from Cinderella.

Marina Warner showed a lovely image of Lotte Reiniger's magical trick table, which she thought of as a magic horse or flying machine in which was able to take flight as an artist and filmmaker.  She told us that through listening to other writers on film (one of whom I remember was Ian Christie) she had been interested in the idea that the characters depicted in Reiniger's work are not shadows that materialise on the screen, but entities in their own right.

As well as outlining the historical background she also touched upon the concept of shadow and the material of shadow and it's metaphorical association with shade and darkness.  In this context she showed the works of William Kentridge and Kara Walker, both of whom embrace the political aspects of the material that they work with.  They both deserve more than a few sentences at the end here so I shall endeavour to write about them again.  In brief, Kara Walker revisits sites of 'darkness' in the American consciousness by satirising the literature of abolition, slavery and the civil war using enormous silhouettes, which are beautiful and very difficult to look at.  William Kentridge uses a direct animation method (as I often do).  He draws on an enormous piece of paper with charcoal and erases each frame before recording a new one, he refers to his method as 'stone age' animation, and Marina Warner suggested that he does this to 'thicken time and add memory'.  I think I can see what he means.

The Power of Mr Christie's Love

How fast the year has gone, it's LIAF again already.

Last night was the opening night.  I especially enjoyed seeing Don Hertzfeldt's Wisdom Teeth (2010) followed by the world premiere of  Phil Mulloy's 2nd feature in the Christies Trilogy Dead but Not Buried (2011).  Two fearless, industrious and single-minded animators who know how to take an idea to it's conclusion and then many, many frames beyond.  In the case of Wisdom Teeth, the action of pulling a friends stitch out of his swollen mouth stretched to five glorious minutes, whilst Phil Mulloy has used a bare 108 drawings to create his 80 minute feature film Dead but not Buried. I didn't miss the other 119,892, the characters were each properly described with just 9 drawings made on a tablet, all close ups, some from the front and some from the side.  It was only Tina that we saw in long shot, and that was necessary to illustrate the results of her encounter with sharks in the Pacific ocean.  In keeping with the spare imagery, the dialogue is read by the computer, the limitations of which provide a great deal of humour.  The film has quite a traditional narrative structure, a quest and a denouement in a (very) dark cave in which the bad guys fight each other to the death about who is going to bring peace and love into the world.  The journey is dark but transformative for all and even angry little Terry has an epiphany. It's really great, see it as soon as you can, infact see anything of Phil Mulloy's and in the meantime LIAF is on all week at the Barbican.

Fun, fun, innocent fun?

Of course it's good that the Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones has reviewed the Barbican's Watch me Move show but I wish he'd spent a big longer in there and engaged with the work as he might have with any other art form.
(I'm going to resist posting a comment on the Guardian blog)(I am)

What's going on here?

The ins and outs of my vampire story are still lost on the small people who pop in and out of my studio, so I'm doing some work to clarify the narrative today. It involves swapping frames around here and there but also I'm adding guide music and sounds today.  I've found some lively Balkan folk music to give me a flavour, here at the comprehensive Dunav resource. (The Frombald story is Serbian.)  I've also been experimenting with printing in two colours and making fades with the rubber stamps by not visiting the ink pad between impressions.  The technique creates an eye-wateringly frenzied pace, so I have to think of ways that I can slow it down, or make little breaks without loss of vitality.

Yikes

A traumatic incident occurs in my film:

Here are some villagers and Frombald in the hotel dining room from yesterday.  I'm printing them onto 35mm film and then scanning them one by one.  I've had some help digitising them from a very talented young animator  Isabel Garrett.

Robert Breer and Everything Goes

I was very sorry to hear that Robert Breer died yesterday.  What a wonderful artist he was.  (Here is a link to a good article in the NY Times.)

Coq au Vin on the menu

Here we all are in Cinema 2 at the Barbican last night.  From right to left Chris Shepherd, Tim Webb, Stuart Hilton, me and Adam Pugh, skillfully guiding the discussion.  Gary Thomas had asked us to chose an influential film to accompany the screening of our Animate films, it was a peachy opportunity.  I chose Al Sens's The See Hear Talk Think Dream and Act Film (1965), which I've never had the chance to see, but reading about the special 'spit' technique that he employed certainly made me think that animation could be for me too back in 1996.  In answer to my request Gary said "What!?" (which meant the film was too long).  In the end I chose Jeff Keen's thrilling trilogy of films Cineblatz, White Lite and Marvo Movie from 1967/8.


Here is the full list of films shown:
Dad's Dead by Chris Shepherd, 2002
15th February by Tim Webb, 1995
The Emperor by Elizabeth Hobbs, 2001
Save me by Stuart Hilton, 1994
Home Road Movies by Robert Bradbrook, 2002 (Chris's choice)
A Man and His Dog Out for Air by Robert Breer, 1958 (Stuart's choice)
Particles in Space by Len Lye, 1979 (Stuart's choice)
Cineblatz, White Lite, Marvo Movie by Jeff Keen, 1967/8 (Mine)


We were missing Swankmajer's The Last Trick, which was chosen by Tim, but not available on the night.


Adam asked us to reflect on our Animate commissions and to assess it's impact on our careers.  For me it was fascinating to hear  how the others felt about and tackled their films.  The reflections became melancholy in the light of the present lack of funding for animated shorts, especially funding like Animate! which allowed so much freedom.  However we were forgetting that Jeff Keen, Len Lye and Robert Breer are all independent artists with 40 years of productivity each.  That's one of the reasons that Jeff Keen is an inspiration to me, as well as the fact that he makes work with what he has to hand, and that his works are gleefully anarchic and quite mysterious.  One of my favourite moments was when Chris Shepherd was talking about the appreciation of independent animated short films.  Imagine you have Burger and chips every day, then one day you find Coq au Vin on the menu.  Try it, you might even like it! 

Animate Projects

On Thursday night I'm going to be going to the Barbican for a night with Animate Projects.  Gary Thomas is going to be doing a gallery talk at 6.30pm focusing on experimental animation and the Animate scheme, then there is a panel talk at 7.30pm in Cinema 2 led by Adam Pugh with Stuart Hilton, Tim Webb, Chris Shepherd and me.  Gary asked us to choose an influential film to show alongside one of our Animate pieces.  I'll let you know how I get on or maybe see you there.

Bobby Breer and Bobby Boo

We also went to a beautiful quaker chapel, with Bobby Boo.

Robert Breer and Everything Goes

Robert Breer's work seemed very well placed at Baltic.  It's a friendly gallery and the work is being enjoyed not just by the visitors.  The gallery attendants also seemed to take great pleasure in the work on the 4th floor, often having to don white gloves and attend to the motorised float sculptures as they  occasionally got into difficulties bumbling independently and imperceptibly to and fro.  

On the 3rd floor there was a 16mm projection of REcreation  on a loop in a black box in the centre of the gallery.   I always wondered whether what Noel Burch is saying makes sense, and I think the answer is both not quite, and perfectly, within the context of the film.  It seems that Breer made the work, showed it to Burch, who went away and wrote a nonsense poem, with puns that refer to the images, that Breer recorded and edited to the image.  It's only a minute long and it has a perfect tension, I often hold my breath for most of the film.  Outside the black box the individual frames are set behind some plexiglass, I had to count the frames to make sure they were all there but then I really appreciated the linear illustration of the work.  I'm not sure why they had been blown up to 35mm though. There are 2 mutoscopes from the 1960's, I wonder what they would have looked like in revolution, one of them was 3D with two eyesights and two sets of paper in circulation.   The flip books were equally tantalising, you can get a little look inside some of them on the link to gb agency if you click on drawings and paintings.

Another highlight for me was seeing the A5 index cards that he works upon, showing small sequences from Fuji, 66, and 69.  The colours were still extremely vivid in the frames from Fuji, where the colour is mostly spray painted.  The cards elegantly illustrate his simple technique and the spareness of his imagery, but it's within the camera that he creates the extraordinary and magical associations. 

The animations were shown in pairs in boxes around the edge of the 4th floor and on monitors on the 3rd.  I've seen the films quite a few times and sometimes with the man himself and his brilliant stories, but a full retrospective would be good now, a Breer immersion in the dark of the cinema really swills out the brain like a tonic.  

Here are some of the new sequences from Frombald that I was scanning today.