All around in my city

I was on my own with the children for a few days, we were merrily occupied playing Top Gear Top Trumps, going to the swings and seeing how many kugels of ice cream we could order to go on one cornetto. We bought a new book for the evenings Rundherum in meiner Stadt by Ali Mitgutsch from 1968, which is splendid because it depicts scenes of children playing in snow and parks and in the street but also (without being sinister) shows people fighting, being angry, drinking and being lecherous too. Although obviously to a lesser degree!


















I wonder if Hazel has got this one?

Cardinal and Nun

Yesterday we saw an exhibition of Egon Schiele's work at the Leopold Museum. This Cardinal and Nun enjoying an illicit moment was so startling: the pyramid of red and their praying hands and the nun being so like the background. I confess I havn't even thought once about Schiele since my A levels, which is a long time ago and which is lazy.

A lucky meeting

This afternoon the air was full of thunder and it was wet, so instead of walking around slowly I sprinted and even jumped over a few puddles. Coming back through Electric Avenue in the Quartier 21 I saw a small installation. Lots of little drawings and a monitor. It was a very beautiful animation by Maya Yonesho called Daumenreise, I think it was number 6: Kyoto Mix. She had made plenty of small drawings which were filmed one by one in the centre of the frame of a journey from a to b or east to west. Just as I was leaving I noticed that she was sitting there near the work, so I was able to talk to her. She showed me some of the highlights of her Vienna Daumenreise and I shall make it my business to seek some of them out, especially the cake with lots of layers including chocolate and cherry. Maya is also here until August so I look forward to chatting again.

Revving up

My watercolours have been dusty for almost ten months, so I have a job getting my animating brain and arm working again. I've been trying to draw anything that I can see, george and poppy, trams, half waffles (see below), buildings, other people on their way and anything I can think of: wild boars, foxes, dead people.

On the exploring front we have had a helping hand from two very kind Vienna residents, and so now we know where the market is and how to enjoy a Viennese coffee. I've been to MUMOK to see a Cy Twombly exhibition, and we have visited the Danube. Here is the view out of our window, we are right in the middle of everything.

We've arrived!

Here is our very good looking home and studio in the Museusmquartier where we will be doing the artist's residency for two months (thanks to Tricky Women). It's as humid as Shanghai so we are slow as snails. Yesterday we went on a tram and had an ice cream and I did some origami.

Don's mum must be proud.

Don Hertzfeldt's event took place last night and was good and it really was busy. How in sweet jesus does he do that? When I think of other really good animators I think it would be hard to fill Cinema 1 in the Curzon. I think it might be because his work shines out on the internet, he has a very clear graphic style and the writing is really funny and a little bit dark, plus it works if you watch ten seconds of it, and holds up over 70 minutes too. He did say in the Q&A that he wasn't especially into people watching the films on the web and it's well-known that he works on film because he prefers to present it in a theatrical setting but I think the cinema was full of people who had got into the work online.

Anyway, one of my favourite moments in his new film I'm so proud of you, was when Bill was standing at a bus stop and a man operating a leaf blower comes by. He lingers for a long time blowing a leaf that's stuck on the pavement, and the blower is quite noisy and knowing what we know about Bill's fragile state of mind, it becomes unbearable tense but funny all at once. Don did talk about those kinds of moments in his films taking a long time to get right and eventually being down to a few frames here and there. It was evident that he really relished the making of the films and that he was doing just exactly what he wanted with his life. Hooray to that!
Here's a blurry picture:

The lights are on...

The studio is mine once more! I don't get to work in there yet but having a little space of my own brings much joy and sanity. Presently I'm gathering up my best squirrel hair brushes and bubble wrapping the lucky tile that I used in The Old, Old, Very Old Man because we are all getting ready to go to Vienna for two months to do the Tricky Women residency that the film won in 2008. It's very exciting. I'll be updating my blog from the studio there.

Thinking big - almost as big as Bill Brand's Masstransiscope

A really lovely artist called Emily Tracy lives nearby and one day we hope to make something big and splendid together. Musing on the possibilities and after a bit of to and fro and help from a friend we managed to come up with what we thought was a perfect and original concept. We would make an enormous stationary zoetrope that became animated when one travelled past on a train, we even found the perfect spot just coming out of Liverpool Street.. but then we found Bill Brand's Masstransiscope.

























It's good isn't it? Maybe Liverpool Street could still do with a Masstransiscope..

Don Hertzfeldt's Bitter Films















The extraordinarily popular Don Hertzfeldt is coming to London as part of a 20 city worldwide sold-out tour. Wow that's truly something for an animator. Wendy and I have got tickets to go to the Curzon Soho at the end of this month. I think I posted about his bitter films blog a few years ago, I really enjoy reading his lower cap musings, it seems like he's always busy on an animation day and night, infact he's only ever worked as an animator, and that is hard work. This image from his film 'rejected' always makes me laugh through my nose straight away.

Mentoring

I'm mentoring an animator/graphic artist called Magda Boreysza. She's doing her MA at the Screen Academy in Edinburgh. As you can see from her blog Fox and Comet working with her gives me a lot to think about, she publishes her own zines (Toasty Cats) with eerie, intricate but also funny drawings in them, she also illustrates, animates and is starting to think about printmaking too. I'm looking forward to seeing what she gets up to when she graduates this year.

Thoughts about Clay


















This weekend is Animate the World again at the Barbican Centre. I'm going to be leading workshops in clay, the handling and modelling of which doesn't come naturally to me, so I've been working hard to get to grips with it.
Below is 'Fun in a Bakery Shop', the first clay animation, made by Edwin S. Porter in 1902.







I've been looking at Mio Mao by Francesco Misseri which was first made in 1979 and has been revivied and continued by the Misseri Studios, it can be seen on Milkshake on Channel 5 and Youtube. I hadn't realised that Misseri also worked in paper (QuaqQuao) and sand (A.E.I.O.U) with similarly elegant results. The work is extraordinarily skilled and of course looks effortless, never becoming crumpled and jaded. This is not something that can be said about my work(!) but I can very much relate to his fluid approach to the animation which has the feel of a recording of an encounter between person and the material with nothing else remaining.



I also came across The Amazing Mr Bickford, a video for Frank Zappa by Bruce Bickford in 1987. I managed to see an excerpt and pretty amazing it looks too. I'd very much like to see more and I'll hunt around for a DVD of it. I'd like to lean towards showing films using metamorphosis, to try and provide a tiny counterpoint to the Wallace and Gromit effect.

Print Triennial in Finland

This is a sneak preview of a printmaking project that I have been working on with three other artists. All four of us work were at one time European Pepinieres printmakers- in-residence at the Jyväskylän Graffiikan Paja in Finland. Anna Ruth has organised a lovely project in which we are all starting a small edition and sending one to each artist and so on, until everyone has intervened on each print, The twelve prints will be shown for the first time at the print triennial in Jyväskylä in June 2009.













This is a butterfly print that I made on Joy Gerrard's first image. It has gone to Anna Ruth in Finland and will visit Veronique La Perriere in Canada. I wonder what it will look like when it flies home to Finland again?

Can you spot the difference?

The top photo is from yesterday and the bottom one from an earlier posting.


































Yes, Poppy has been growing bigger but also I've painted the walls. Slowly it's turning into a studio again, though we are having some fun in there first.

Mr Willett's Popular Pottery

In the Brighton and Hove museum I greatly enjoyed Mr Willett's popular pottery collection. His thesis was that "the history of a country may be traced on its homely pottery". In that he was a little bit like Henry Wellcome. Depicted in porcelain and ceramic there were domestic and public scenes of every nature. Here are just two shelves of Mr Willett's treasure - a 1700 delftware fruit dish depicting Mary II and a bone jug featuring George III and Napoleon as The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver.

Paper cinema


















Emily and I went to see King Pest & the Nightflyer by Paper Cinema at the little Angel last night. A lovely illustrator with an old-fashioned beard and an assistant, took his shoes off to present two short stories, one original, one Edgar Allan Poe.
His black ink pen drawings were presented live to a video camera which was projected on a larger screen, sometimes four drawings at once, some very close to the camera, framing and revealing others further away, the auto focus of the camera working hard and my brain too. The methods were all exposed in the music as well, Kora accompanied the story with many different instruments sitting to the right of the stage. My favourite of the two was King Pest, especially the part where two characters are walking a long way together, and everything slows down for a moment. It created a bit of punctuation in the narrative and change of pace that was perhaps missing from Nightflyer, but I still wouldn't have missed going, it was really great.
Thanks Sam for the tip off!

Paper Bag Lady















I was lucky enough to be invited to be the special guest at Paperbaglady in Brighton which is organised by Laura Seymour and Sam McCarthy of Open Book. I hadn't met Sam and Laura before but I said yes as soon as I saw their website because the gingham made me think of cake and I thought they would be good people. I was right, Poppy and I had a really good time, the event has a cabaret feel and everything is carefully thought through. I had an extremely tasty roast dinner and listened to Jane Bartholemew's first set, I liked it very much especially her song 'Ghost'. They screened six women-directed animated short films and afterwards Sam talked a little bit about the films (see picture) and explained why they had chosen them, which made the screening a bit special. They screened two of my films: The Old Man and The Emperor and I answered some questions posed by Sam. It was hard to remember the answers to questions about my practice, I've been on maternity leave for nearly six months now, but it was good to have a professional moment. Thanks to Sam and Laura, see you again one day I'm sure.

Clare Kitson at Pages of Hackney

Poppy and I went up the road to Pages of Hackney to see Clare Kitson talking about her new book 'British Animation - The Channel 4 Factor'. Pages of Hackney is a new, very lovingly-stocked independent bookshop in Clapton and the talk was only £3 with a glass of wine included. I'd certainly like to wander back that way soon. Downstairs was a small freshly painted space with a telly and 25 chairs where Clare talked about her new book while her partner held up a ring binder with some photocopies to illustrate some of the works that she spoke about. It was just about full up with a mixture of animators, a few students and some of the artists featured in the book. She summarised the remarkable role that Channel 4 played in supporting the production of animation, until the big budgets dwindled to leave just Animate! and 4mations. There was also a television on which she showed Door by David Anderson and City Paradise by Gaelle Denis.



















I was lucky enough to have a copy of the book already as my producer Kathrein won a copy from Shooting People and kindly gave it to me. I'm a Clare Kitson fan, she wrote Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey. The author confesses that her new book has a hybrid quality, she tells her angle on the story of Channel 4 animation and sandwiched in the middle are the production stories from some of Channel 4's key works (30 of them). It's interesting for nosy people like me, coming to animation just before the end of the Channel 4 funding era to hear how it all came about and to know where everyone fits in. At the film festivals I have met many of the animators mentioned but not quite appreciated their place in the history of British Animation, I'm thinking about Marjut Rimminen, Vera Neubauer and Ruth Lingford in particular. It is the nature of the text that it leaves one wondering about the future of animation here in Britain, now that Channel 4 no longer supports it to a great degree. I think those Channel 4 years have led to a degree of expectation about funding for animation that has caused many animators to shelve their prospective works. I have lately tried to tailor my practice so that I can continue without waiting for significant funding (until another golden age comes by!).

My plans for 2009

I'm going to be mostly on maternity leave until early in the summer of 2009 although I will be doing a few workshops and teaching animation at Anglia Ruskin University for one day a week next semester. In July and August I'll be going to Vienna with the whole family to take up the residency that I was awarded as a prize at the Tricky Women Film Festival in 2008. I can't wait. it's not just the buns and some European travel but having some time to make work is a wonderful prize.

Mentoring

One of my favourite jobs last year was mentoring two out of the three animators who were making their animated films with a bursary from The Film and Video Workshop.
Elle Farnham made The Grand Pier an animation made using a spare rotoscope technique depicting the beach and Grand Pier at Weston Super Mare. Elle's film made it to the last 12 of the Depict competition and I'm sure it will visit many festivals next year.

Michaela Nettell is just finishing her film Under Skies, which is made up of very beautiful sequences of animated stills of Victoria Park re-filmed through glass and by mirrors, I'm looking forward to seeing the finished work.

Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, Croatia

I was really pleased to be invited to show the drawings from Sawney Beane in the exhibition To The (Very) Last Drawing curated by Vanja Hraste. The show is on until 17th February 2009.


Here is a picture taken by Vanja herself.

It took me a long time to find the drawings to send to Croatia, not only is my Spellbound archiving system flawed but I'd forgotten that the drawings were really small (10cm x 8cm) compared to The Emperor and The Witches (approx 60cm X 40cm) so they were squirrelled into a smaller box. I can't remember why I chose to work so small, I was using charcoal instead of watercolour, so perhaps I didn't need so much space to make the images, I was also working in Montreal, so maybe I was being economical too. There are only 15 good drawings from the film, which is 10'38". This is because my technique just leaves one drawing per shot, instead of one per frame and after one particularly busy scene featuring King James I's army, there is just a scruffy mess left behind.

There's a baby on my desk.

I'm happily sharing my animation studio with Poppy. She arrived in October at the same time as a damp patch under the floor. Once the builders had gone it seemed like a good time to tidy up and instigate a temporary change of use, although as you can see, she's not left much room for me and my watercolours, move over Poppy!

Annecy


I had the chance to go to Annecy in June for a few nights, from Thursday to Sunday. It was quite overwhelming at first, the festival had been in full swing for a few days and I didn't know where to begin. Luckily I crossed over for a few hours with my NFB friend Michael Fukushima, we had a beer and chips until it rained when I found a taxi to my hotel. On friday I went to the Emil Cohl exhibition at the chateau up the hill. That was a rare and unexpected treat. I found out that Cohl was active in all parts of the theatre, had a photographic studio, wrote articles for newspapers about caricature, games and philately but that he was also interested in fishing, cycling, geneology and history as well as inventing games, tests, puzzles, anagrams and optical illusions before taking up film at the age of 50. The films were projected onto the walls in the Chateau but they were all projected at once, adjacent to each other. In my condition, I could have used a stool on wheels.

Annecy

Next week I'm going to Annecy on Thursday, so next weekend I hope to update the blog with my thoughts.

Anifest

Shelly Wain and I went to Anifest and here we are in the square where there was a screening of The Simpsons Movie.

































Shelly and I were both running workshops at Animate the World at the Barbican Centre in London on Saturday, so we arrived at the earliest opportunity on Sunday. One of the reasons that we targeted Anifest for our animation festival trip was Břetislav Pojar.
Thanks to the driver named Gerry we just arrived in time for the screening of Pojar's films and an audience with him too. It was fantastic to be in Trebon, sitting in the beautiful mint-green theatre watching the works of such a master. He came on at the end but he was just on his own, and obviously uncomfortable and dying to get away. Shelly wanted to know all about his multiplane set up and he threw some light on it, but only to say that there was a mirror involved... It was very mysterious and we are trying to find out more about that.



As you can see from my picture I'm expecting a baby at the end of the summer, so we didn't take things too fast. It went like this: full breakfast, screening, snack, screening, full lunch, screening, lie down, waffle/ice cream, little walk, supper, bed. We were only there a couple of days but we did catch a few screenings. The two films that I particularly enjoyed were KFJG no 5 by Alexey Alekseev, Hungary 2007, a really charming animation with a bear, a wolf and a rabbit in it and The Mouse Story by Benjamin B. Renner from La Poudriere, a really simple adaptation of an Aesop's fable with really great timing and characterisation. It was good to see Franz Kafka's Country Doctor by Koji Yamamura. The film has been winning alot of prizes, and I can see why, it's in a league of it's own. It's an eerie experience, very complicated and detailed, like a Paula Rego print. I'd like to have another look at it in a cinema to pick up some more of that story. He won the big prize, quite right too I think.

The British Animation Awards

I'm really pleased to be a finalist in the British Animation Awards short film category. A bit astounded too to be up there with Yours Truly by Osbert Parker and The Pearce Sisters by Luis Cook, two huge films. The award ceremony is on March 13th, it will be exciting to go to an animation party, or any party for that matter!

A hat trick or a nutmeg

The Old Man won best Independant film at BAF. Thank you very much BAF. I went for the first day of the festival and had an interesting day, I saw Paul Bush's talk and the professional and short films in competition.
Now I'm the guardian of this little fella. He has a stern look, which wont be bad for me because 2008 is going to be a year in which my studio is tidied more often.

Aurora in Norwich

In my spellbound blog I made a little report from Aurora but I dont think I said that The Old Man won best short film, it was a wonderful surprise, although I had a cheap train ticket, so I almost had to take the precious award and sprint for the train.

Dick Arnall

Following Robert Breer's morning screening was a wonderful tribute in memory of Dick Arnall, who sadly died in February this year. It centred around a screening of films, each one meaty and provocative in it's own way. The films were nominated and introduced by people who knew Dick, including his wife, the wonderful Finnish animator Marjut Rimminen. Other contributions came from Gillian Lacey, Robert Bradbrook, Gareth Evans, festival director Adam Pugh and Jane Pilling. They each had a story to tell and all together painted a picture of Dick that made those who knew him smile and feel a little bit sad and those that didn't know him wish they had.
The films themselves were almost all extraordinary and in the context of the screening, there was a conduicive air of concentration in the cinema. They included Jerzy Kucia's Przez Pole (Across the Field) from 1992, Patrick Bokanowski's La Plage from 1991 and Santiago Alvarez's film LBJ (1967)

Tommorrow I head off for a day trip to Bradford for the first day of BAF.

Robert Breer at Aurora

Here is a picture of David Curtis talking to Robert Breer on Saturday afternoon.

I only had one day at Aurora, but it was full to the brim with good things. Robert Breer had been there for the whole festival. He's very hard of hearing, but it just meant that no-one could interrupt one of his great stories and if a long winded question came his way, he just chose a word and ran with it. It was encouraging to listen to a person so contented with work and life who has made a film every year for 40 years. We saw a programme of his later films in the morning, this included LMNO, Bang, Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons and What goes up.
The films have no narrative continuity, but a definate shape and structure and I enjoyed trying to think of them more as paintings with a few basic elements that arrive from front to back and in layers, which you can piece together, not necessarily there and then but later as well. David Curtis asked him how he went about starting a film, to which he answered that he enjoyed feelings of a heightened sensibility, looking forward to something that's unpredictable and not knowing the outcome. The only thing that he knew was that he would avoid suggestions of narrative and continuity, not only to emphasise the plastic nature of the work but also because our daily experiences are fragmented in that way.

Pojd'te Pane

November is unofficially my month of animation, and thanks to a tip off from Shelly, Simon and their three small friends from Hackney, we had an outing to see some Pojar films at the Riverside together.
We watch Pojd'te Pane once a week here at home, we take it like a tonic, but seeing the bears in a cinema with a audience of Czech under fives was truly joyous and revealing. We could see the selotape and the fluff here and there and owing to the peals of laughter, I could tell there's a funny joke about the way that Mister and Mister speak to each other. There were also two other films, both with a message about pets: don't overfeed your dog, it will turn into an elephant and don't leave your cats on their own with your paints out. At the end there was a disco in the bar but by then we'd peaked for sure.

Jan Lenica

There's a rare chance to see a film by the wonderful animator Jan Lenica.
UBU ET LA GRANDE GIDOUILLE, directed by Jan Lenica in 1979, is going to show at Cine Lumiere, 17 Queensberry Place,
London SW7 2DT on 7th November at 9pm.

The Old Man has won a book

He's won best animation at the Flip festival in Wolverhampton and the prize is Paul Wells's new book on scriptwriting. I'm very pleased. I couldn't go up again yesterday because I was doing a workshop in Bracknell but I would have loved another trip to Wolverhampton. Thank you Flip.

Thanks to The Old Man (film) I'm getting out a bit. Last week I went to participate in Drawing in the Digital, a symposium organised by Ross Winning from the School of Art & Design at Wolverhampton University. I left my pen at home so most of my thoughts will be from memory. The symposium intended to assess the impact of digital technology on animation today via the musings of Paul Wells, Erica Russell, Dew Harrison, Tim Webb and me. Sadly Alys Hawkins couldnt' make it at the last minute, I would liked to have met her and seen her films in the cinema. Paul was first, and really whooped everyone up, I remember that he was great but I was straight after him and the pen was at home, so I remember nothing of his presentation, except 'Roof sex', one of the Twisted films of the PES collective. I presented my work and talked about wet watercolour, paper and brushes. Dew Harrison brought up the subject of artists and digital media in the context of PVA Labculture. Tim Webb made Mr Price with a computer and is senior tutor in animation at the RCA. He suggested that digital technology had some disadvantages in the production process: putting off decisions, and movement for the sake of it. At the Royal College of Art, they make the same number of stop frame animation films as they did 12 years ago. (I imagine that's unusual). He talked about the Hungarian animator Peter Foldes 1974 film Hunger, and showed The (also wonderful) Wolfman by Tim Hope. After lunch, the very dynamic Erica Russell gave us some insight into her background and practice. She made the Oscar nominated Feet of Song in 1988. Liam Scanlan has the longest CV I've ever seen and told us that with a little determination, you could be in charge of about a hundred render farms on a Star Wars set.

Clive Walley, Paul Wells, Erica Russell and Liam Scanlan on the Flip stage.

There was alot of chat over the day about the physical aspects of animation, and can it be replicated, will the tools improve, will it be missed etc. The anxiety seemed inevitable because the panel were older, mostly working with traditional tools, and were conscious of talking to an audience of students who seemed comfortable with moving between traditional and digital techniques.

The day was rounded off by a screening of Clive Walley's films. Sadly I had to jump on a train and only saw Prelude, which was smashing. I had a lovely day, it was brilliant to meet so many great animators all at once and the Flip festival is very much worth a visit.

and Dok Leipzig too

November - festival month

I'm having a busy time trying to fit the November festivals into my busy schedule:
There's
BAF
Flip
Aurora
FIKE
&
The Children's Film Festival at the Barbican.
I'm going to be participating in a symposium at Flip called 'Drawing in the Digital', and doing flip book and claymation workshops at the Children's Film Festival. I can squeeze in a day trip to BAF but for FIKE and Aurora I'm going to need a time machine or a helicopter.
It would be worth it because Robert Breer is showing work at Aurora and he's magnificent, both the films and the man.

The circus

Thanks to my mum, we had a family outing to Billy Smart's circus.


My partner sat on the end of the row, and here is a picture of him doing a graceful cartwheel in the ring.

The wonders of ichthysaurus and plesiosaurus

I found a panorama button on the camera that Nina lent me a few years ago, so I put it to use at the Natural History Museum this afternoon.


I did quite a few drawings too and they might come on my next blog entry.

The Old Man's festival journey

Thanks to the generosity of Samantha Moore, my festival spreadsheet problems were solved in an instant. She kindly sent the template for her film The Beloved Ones and I have just been adapting that. I remember from our EI course that if you press shift, apple and 3 you get a screenshot. I think that's about all the electronic imaging I can remember.


The Old Man is doing very well and so far he has been to Edinburgh, London International Animation Festival and Canary Wharf. This week he was in Ottawa and in the next couple of months there are trips to Leipzig DokFest, Aurora in Norwich, BAF and Flip in Wolverhampton. The British Council have accepted my application to help with the submissions too, which is good, because at the moment I don't have any studio time, even if I could open that door.

I havn't been in there for ages

I don't think it's going to be very easy to go in the bog studio the next time I want to. There is a pile up of tax related paperness, origami paperness, bills, material for bunting, plastic bags and secondhand files from Nina which I hope to use one day.
I would take a photo, but I don't think I could squeeze through the door.

Last night of LIAF



Here I was in the Curzon last night with Nag Vladermersky, Mait Laas and Priit Tender from Eesti Joonis Films in Estonia. Crouched on the floor is the splendid globe-trotting LIAF co director Malcom Turner.

At the Best of the Fest they showed Jeu by George Schwizgebel, The Lecture by Clint Cure, Birdcalls by Malcom Sutherland, The adventures of John and John by Will Bishop Stevens, my Old, Old, Very Old Man, the aforementioned Carnivore Reflux and The Tale of How, Urban Tale by Florence Miahilhe, the winner of the grand prize: Everything will be OK by Don Hertzfeld, Moloch by Marcin Pazera and winner of British Best film: Time is Running Out by Mark Reisbig.

Time is Running Out is a strange and inventive film, the action takes place within a continous circular pan, coupled with a frame that slowly decreases in size and sound that becomes gradually more layered. It's like being hypnotised, assaulted and slowly crushed all at once. Don Hertzfeld did something similar with his sound, which was also used to reflect the chaotic inner world of protagonist Bill. Sometimes it wasn't possible to hear his voiceover at all for the sounds of headbutting, crisp munching, vacuum cleaning and key dropping that went on. It was good to see Urban Tale again. It was shown in Zagreb and perhaps I didn't quite appreciate how gutsy it is. It's also hard to see how the tale ties together on first viewing, because the oil on glass technique can get a bit murky and it's hard to see who's who. I did like it though and I think other people did too.
The Tale of John and John was pretty glorious. I've been reading about it at www.wrongboy.com. It was mostly glorious because of the joy-of-it-all that some films have.

On the subject of joy-of-it-all, I was very lucky yesterday not only because The Old Man was awarded best of programme 4 by the audience and the jury, but also because I bought a little green supereight viewer on a key ring from Mark Pawson at the Vyner Street Festival.

Long shorts

LIAF is here. I missed the beginning because of our splendid trip to Orkney but managed to get to the Curzon for International Prog 5 and 6 (the long shorts). The long shorts programme is a good idea, you get just 6 films, easier on the brain than the 14 in Prog 5.

From the long shorts I enjoyed Pekka Korhonen's Siberian Express, because it was funny, and dark and a little bit sexy.
There were quite alot depictions of women as large breasted animals over the course of the evening, one of whom was the lovely hairy Ramona pictured here, not enough to form a worrying trend but I will be monitoring this! It was good to watch Everything will be OK by Don Hertzfeldt, it is the American cousin of Who I am and What I want by David Shrigley and Chris Shepherd. The film was very masterful but a little too knowing, in my mind not quite match for the genius that was 'Rejected'. In Prog 5 Sarah's Tale by Svetlana Filipova was wonderful. The tale is told with a very light touch, the gentle, scruffy drawings and even the subtitles visited every corner of the screen and she kept our eyes busy with very elegant, musical changes of proportion and perspective.





Certainly not subtle or elegant but complete and unusual was Soldier by David Peros-Bonnot from Croatia in which a statue of a soldier runs amok. The filmmaker intended it to be "A symbolic story about a product of society that gets out of control". What struck me as being more interesting was the use of model animation in a story about statues that come alive.
The White Wolf by Pierre-Luc Granjon was the last film in the session and it was magical but really blunt and I enjoyed it very much. Especially the way the wolfs' severed head rolled down the hill. Carnivore Reflux by The People's Republic of Animation and The Tale of How by The Blackheart Gang were stunning to watch but in my mind they both suffered a conflict between the words and the image. The other Moment of Note was a CG horror film in which a blood smeared naked lady with no nipples ran petrified through a forest.

Two animation-related podcasts that I've enjoyed

http://www.baf.org.uk/2007/podcasts.asp
http://www.directorsnotes.com/2007/02/02/dn-ep-021-forest-murmurs-jonathan-hodgson/

and Don Hertzfeld's journal
http://bitterfilms.com/forum.html

http://www.resonancefm.com/
Shelly's resonance night was the animation highlight of the summer so far. I havn't been out too much it's true but it WAS really good. She chose some beautiful films, alot of them I hadn't seen before. The dotty Panique Au Village (http://www.paniqueauvillage.com/Public/index_after.html) by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar was very popular, as was John Paul Harney's film Brand Spanking, which is a piece of writing genius. Come on John-Paul, write something else.
Vladimir Leschiov's new film Lost in Snow is wonderful, I think I prefer it to Insomnia. The white of the snow and the movement of the ice provide an opportunity for some lovely playful scenes, although it has a grave feeling to it, just like Insomnia. The Magic Gloves by Ben and John Harmer is a great story and cleverly made, I didn't anticipate such a sick ending. I can imagine it as a series, though that little mouse with his goofy teeth would have to come back to life.







A nice man named Michael Garrad introduced the films and told some revolting jokes, it created a proper focus. Previously I had reservations about the Roxy as a screening venue, I think there was a hen party in on the Phil Mulloy night, but it was tremendous. I hope Shelly can do it again.

Canadian Premiere

I was overjoyed to hear that my Old Man is nestled in amongst some amazing films at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in the narrative short competition. I would have really liked to have gone, to see how he looked in the middle of that lot but we're going to be quite busy in September. I went to OIAF in 2004 as I was making Sawney Beane in Montreal, I think it was my first international film festival, I thought there would be 40 people there and we could all go to the pub between screenings, but no, everyone likes animation, there were THOUSANDS of people there, enough to form a MOB.
For the filmmakers it's downright terrifying sitting in Cinema 1 feeling the mood of that Mob over six minutes thirty eight seconds.
I read that last year an audience member stood up and shouted 'This Film is Shit' and walked out.

Rachel's bird card- outside and inside

The festival premiere...

..of the very old man is on 17th August at 2pm at the Edinburgh International Film Fest in the programme called McLaren 1. Thanks Edinburgh. All the films that I have made have premiered in the Filmhouse Cinema 1, it's a special place for me.
After that the film is going to be shown at the wonderful London International Animation Festival sometime between the 21st and 26th August. LIAF is at the Curzon Soho, so it is also special because I can cycle there.

Shelly's animation night is coming up..


can you come along?

Workshopping

I've been doing a lot of workshops recently. My friend Emily is half of Lumina (http://www.lumina-arts.org.uk/intro.html) they have been working with the Thames Festival to deliver workshops in primary schools. It involves making millions of lovely pom pom's out of carrier bags, then carrying them home on the tube. I've been leaning heavily on journey planner. You can see the pom pom's assembled into a magnificent dome over the weekend of the 15th September at the Thames Festival.
Today I was working for the Film and Video Workshop in a secondary school delivering a talk and an animation taster for Skillset. What was truly wonderful about the talk with Kevin Griffiths and Susan Beattie was that they brought a womble and the original monkey, (Johnny Vegas's little friend). The monkey was very silky inside, I didn't hold the womble.