Dream Work (2003), directed by Peter Tscherkassky.
The 16th essay, “Animating With Live Action Footage,” is
published in full at Press Play at IndieWire. It deals with
several extremely challenging films that fall along the borderline
between live action and animation. As
the highlighted films by Peter Tscherkassky, Virgil Widrich, and Norman McLaren
are experimental, I struggled to find an accessible way to describe what I see
in them. My experience with a Beatles
song suggested a way in…
First, a memory which has been
seared into my brain: It’s 1973 and my cousin and I are alone in the
house, obsessively playing and replaying the last minute of the Beatles’ “I Am
the Walrus” backwards on a cheap plastic portable turntable. And I’m getting
seriously creeped out.
This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Cartoon-blogging, essay 15 of 21 blog entries on 250 great animated short films
The Sandman (1993), directed by Paul Berry.
The fifteenth essay, “Animating Horror,” is published in
full at Press Play at IndieWire. A
special Halloween essay, it focuses on three films from our list: The Tell-Tale Heart (Ted Parmelee, 1953),
Harpya (1979, Raoul Servais), and The Sandman (1993, Paul Berry).
It’s the witching hour…
The Sandman (1993), directed by Paul Berry.
The Tell-Tale Heart (1953), directed by Ted Parmelee.
Harpya (1979), directed by Raoul Servais.
The moon is out...
The Tell-Tale Heart (1953), directed by Ted Parmelee.
This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Cartoon-blogging, essay 14 of 21 blog entries on 250 great animated short films
Pixillation (1970), directed by Lillian Schwartz.
The fourteenth essay, “Animating Without a Narrative,” is
published in full at Press Play at IndieWire.
Written by guest blogger Scott Bussey, this is an unusually personal
essay on the abstract animated short films of Adam Beckett and Lillian Schwartz.
Adam Beckett was an animator and
visual effects artist who attended the California Institute of the Arts during
the 1970s, where he learned from and studied alongside important members of the
LA experimental animation scene. Lillian Schwartz is a pioneer in the field of
computer art who worked out of Bell Labs during the 1970s, then going on to
develop tools for computer-aided analysis of art, particularly finding
inspiration in the work of Leonardo Da Vinci. Each of these relatively unknown
animators is represented by one work on the “250 Great Animated Short Films”
list: Heavy-Light (1973) for
Beckett and Pixillation (1970)
for Schwartz.
This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Cartoon-blogging, essay 13 of 21 blog entries on 250 great animated short films
Ryan (2004), directed by Chris Landreth.
The 13th essay, “Animating Real Life,” is published in full
at Press Play at IndieWire. The essay
begins with perhaps the first animated documentary, Winsor McCay’s The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), and then moves on to
some very challenging examples of modern psychological realism: Frank
Film (1973), Ryan (2004), and Orgesticulanismus (2008).
“… but I’m getting off the subject
here, I’m afraid. This story is about Ryan.”
The subject of Ryan (2004)
is real: animator Ryan Larkin (1943-2007). The story is drawn from real life,
as pieced together from recorded interviews. The visual approach is . . .
director Chris Landreth’s interpretation of real life.
This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Cartoon-blogging, essay 12 of 21 blog entries on Animating the Directors: 100 Masters of Short Animation
The twelfth essay, “Animating the Directors: 100 Masters of
Animated Short Film,” is published in full at Fandor Keyframe. The short written essay leads into a witty
and joyous video celebration of the great animation directors by Kevin B. Lee. Enjoy!
One of Keyframe’s most popular
articles from last year was its illustrated guide to 100 masters of the animated short film. Film animation has thrived for over a century, but has
never seen quite the level of recognition afforded to live-action feature
filmmakers. And while there are plenty of outstanding animated features to
celebrate, a list of those films wouldn’t boast nearly as much eye-popping
diversity as those represented by this list.
And here’s the video as a stand-alone essay on YouTube:
I’ve seen 100 out of 100!
How’d you do?
This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Cartoon-blogging, essay 11 of 21 blog entries on 250 great animated short films
The Ash-Lad and the Good Helpers (1961), directed by Ivo Caprino.
The eleventh essay, “Animating the Folktale: The Puppet
Animation of Ivo Caprino,” is published in full at Press Play at
IndieWire. Written by guest blogger
Waldemar Hepstein, this essay focuses on the storytelling of Ivo Caprino,
particularly the two Caprino shorts that made our list: The Ash-Lad
and the Good Helpers (1961) and The
Seventh Father of the House (1966).
The classical fairy tales and
fables have served as fodder for many film animators, from the pioneer days of
Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney onward. One filmmaker almost exclusively
associated with this type of material is Ivo Caprino (1920-2001), Norway’s most
famous practitioner of the art of animation.
This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Cartoon-blogging, essay 10 of 21 blog entries on 250 great animated short films
The Mitten (1967), directed by Roman Kachanov.
This is the tenth of 21 essays inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.
Artists often mine their childhood for inspiration. Charles Dickens and Mark Twain recreated
their childhood world in classic books;
Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes
and Charles Schulz’s Peanuts explored
life through the eyes of children in classic comic strips. I’m friends with a minister who often wears Snoopy
and Charlie Brown ties to church, acknowledging their spiritual depth.
Schulz used the world of childhood to grapple with his own adult questions and
struggles. He tapped into deep wells by immersing himself in
childhood.
When drawing together our list of 250 great animated short
films, our panelists found a small yet rich selection of movies where artists
recreate and creatively explore the world of childhood. Animation is
particularly effective at tapping into the recesses of the brain where our deepest
memories reside. An animated image can instantly summon up strong emotions tied to our past.
Of course, many people erroneously believe that animation is
nothing more than a medium for entertaining children, probably because
children are naturally drawn to the world of the cartoon. In the early days of
television, advertising and marketing salesmen quickly capitalized on the new captive audience. Short bursts of 30-second animation can be very effective at
lodging sales messages into the brains of children, creating an urgent need for the hot new toy or the sweetest breakfast cereal. All film is manipulative, but there seems to
be something especially crass about manipulating children through animation, whispering
in their ears as they relax on a Saturday morning.
Fortunately, my topic isn’t “Animating for Maximum
Manipulation” but the much more agreeable “Animating Childhood,” where the intent
is to express an idea or vision. Each of
today’s selections opens into universality. The Dr. Seuss-penned Gerald McBoing Boing widens to express
ideas about creativity, Tulips Shall Grow
begins and ends with children yet is dominated by war and loss in its middle
passage, Boy and Girl explores gender and relationships, and Mikhail Aldashin’s Rozhedstvo
(Christmas) brings a childlike
innocence to the Jesus nativity story. Very big themes can be explored through
the eyes of childhood.
Little Tadpoles
Search for Mama / Xiao ke dou zhao ma ma (1960): Director Te Wei (1915-2010)
made Little Tadpoles Search for Mama
(also known as Where is Mama?) for very
young children but its technique transcends its content. Published in the same year (1960), P.D.
Eastman’s classic American picture book Are
You My Mother? has the same plot yet it remains rooted in its child
audience. Te Wei’s short film offers a
deeper experience with nearly identical material, thanks to the miraculous
beauty of its imagery. The simple
narrative of tadpoles in search of their mother becomes an exercise in brush
painting in motion.
Te Wei made this groundbreaking film with important
assistance from Tang Cheng and animators Duan Ziaoxuan and A Da (who directed Three Monks on our list). Produced
at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, Little
Tadpoles Search for Mama was the first film to employ brush painting
animation and it received much acclaim for its effects. The school of
tadpoles moves through the water with a delightful random feel as certain adventurous
tadpoles venture out while others shyly hold back. The exquisite brush
work conveys the pond environment through carefully chosen details. The
other denizens of the pond each receive charming personalities, from birds on
the shore to a catfish, shrimp, and a crab in the depths. The fifteen
minutes pass like an enchanted dream — childhood evoked in a delicate flow of museum-quality
images.
The Mitten / Varezhka
(1967): A puppet animation by Soviet director Roman Kachanov (1921-1993),
The Mitten carefully and wordlessly
establishes its plot in the opening minutes (a girl desperately wishes she
could have a dog of her own) before discreetly shifting into the girl’s
imagination. From her point of view, we see a mitten transform into an
adorable knitted dog and share in her joy at his doggy behavior. There’s charm in abundance in Kachanov’s
comic treatment of the wide variety of dogs in the neighborhood. And I especially appreciate the sweet end of
the film, as it wisely refrains from indulging in the extreme sentimentality of
the scene that would naturally follow.
Tchou-Tchou
(1972): Director Co Hoedeman can animate
anything. He’s animated sand (The Sand Castle — it’s on our list),
wire, sealskin figures, and teddy bears.
In Tchou-Tchou, Hoedeman
animates blocks — for 13 vivid minutes, a simple children’s block set is in
constant inventive motion. The boy and
girl at the center of the action are basic figures, each composed of three painted
wooden cubes. But watch as Hoedeman ingeniously
finds countless ways to endow his building blocks with personality. He’s a playful wizard behind the scenes, animating
with childlike glee — making a difficult art look like child’s play.
Support
the artists and the art of the animated short film! Tchou-Tchou is available for purchase at the NFB website.
Here’s a sampling of a few other films about childhood from
our list of 250 great animated short films. While these films offer a child’s
eye view of the world, they are not childish.
As William Wordsworth wrote when he recollected scenes from his early
childhood, “the meanest flower that blows can give/Thoughts that do often lie
too deep for tears.”
Little Nemo / Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald
and His Moving Comics (Winsor McCay, USA, 1911)
Tulips Shall Grow (George Pal, USA, 1942)
Gerald McBoing Boing (Robert Cannon, USA, 1951)
Boy and Girl / Malchik i devochka (Rozaliya Zelma, USSR,
1978)
Who Will Comfort Toffle? / Vem skall trösta knyttet? (Johan
Hagelbäck, Sweden, 1980)
