36 minute read
Special Screenings
16+
Thursday, Sept 22 7:00pm
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OAG – Alma Duncan
Friday, Sept 23 7:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Jeudi, 22 sept 19h00
GAO – Alma Duncan
Vendredi, 23 sept 19h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
All Alone Except for Everyone: The Work of Jonni Phillips by Ben Compton
California-based animator Jonni Phillips has amassed a devoted online following for her introspective and deeply funny films. In a loose style combining drawing, paper cutouts, and digital techniques, Jonni explores the banal and profound experiences that make up everyday life. We follow her characters as they lose and find themselves in monotonous day jobs, foreign places, and new relationships. It’s her quirky narrative voice and collaborative spirit that make Phillips a must-know emerging creator in the world of independent animation.
Spanning multiple films, shorts, and countless online clips, everything Jonni makes prioritizes feeling. “I’m not interested in achieving any sense of tangible reality,” she notes. “A lot of my choices are meant to communicate an emotional reality rather than a literal or logical one.” This might mean switching mediums or bringing in a rotating cast of guest animators, voice actors, and musicians. While Jonni cites Richard Condie and Sally Cruikshank as major influences, her work also conjures up all sorts of cultural touchstones beyond the field of animation. Again and again, Jonni’s proficiency with different formats (musical sequences, television programs, puppetry, etc.), as well as filmic language (match cuts, montage, POV shots...) is highlighted.
Although Phillips’ toolkit is broad, she only uses what is necessary. Some of her best moments are achieved with almost no animation at all. 2017’s Goodbye Forever Party includes a tough conversation between two characters, one of whom is wearing a yellow Teletubbylike costume. As she tells her partner that she has fallen out of love, the headpiece remains in a permanent smile. It’s a tragic narrative device that shows Jonni’s brilliant sense of restraint and efficiency. There is virtually no movement accompanying the muffled sound from inside the head, which is then pulled off to reveal the character crying.
In other sequences, a wry sense of humour distils pop culture discourse into its simplest form. 2016’s Stilton’s In Charge features two characters watching a television program. A doctor hits a patient’s knee with a hammer, which the viewers observe in silence until one proclaims matter-of-factly, “I don’t agree with his methods.” Like a Gen Z update of Richard Condie’s “Sawing for Teens” program in The Big Snit (1985), this sequence feels distinctly “of the internet” without engaging in the irony and apathy that bogs down so much online content. Jonni instead opts for true sincerity, relishing in the mundane. The result is something sweet and off-kilter all at once.
Sight gags are another recurring comedic feature, often appearing on screen for minute amounts of time. Some are puns, and many are just funny words put together. A tour bus is made by “Greynoun”. A duck who is a salesman is named “Duck Salesman”. An electric piano is made by “ROLEX”. An ad for a television show reads, “Inchworms in Paradise: Only on ESPN.” A barista waits for customers in front of a sign that reads “Special Today: CREAM CREAM CREAM CREAM CREAM”. A vacant apartment advertises “1 bath, kitchen,” and “built-in rats.” The familiar is set askew.
Media around Jonni’s practice often describes her visuals as ‘DIY’, ‘indie’, and ‘lo-fi’. These descriptors are accurate to an extent. Her films are crowdfunded and embody the handmade aesthetics of zine, comic, and internet subcultures. Jonni’s first animations were
Lego Brickfilms. She also credits the mentorship of experimental animators like Lori Damiano and Melissa Bouwman for “cracking open her brain”. After being schooled at CalArts and landing jobs at studios, the fact that Phillips has prioritized her own projects signals a commitment to the ethos of independent filmmaking.
But terms like ‘DIY’ are also coded. They can delegitimize alternative filmmakers by implying that they don’t really know what they’re doing. This is far from the case with Jonni, who has skillfully created her own studio model (“Herbert Sorbet Studio”) with the help of Patreon and artistic friendships forged over years. Her career reflects a world where the border between “doing-it-yourself” and Professional Animator™ seems increasingly porous. When major production houses rely on freelance labour and the mainstream has splintered into millions of social media channels, Jonni’s indie projects should be understood as just as viable and worthy of consideration as something with studiobacking.
Phillips’ against-the-grain mentality is more than her relationship to industry. She also responds to the “arbitrary and formulaic” rules of animation as an art form. With each frame, Jonni pushes against the standards of The Animator’s Survival Kit or Pixar storytelling. In an interview with Terry Ibele, she explains, “A lot of the rules are made for a specific kind of person. For me, as someone who is transgender and neurodivergent…I’m looking for what works for me the most. What’s the thing that makes sense to me? How can I express myself in a way that feels correct?”
This is a simple but liberating idea that connects Phillips’ process and storytelling. For instance, in 2019’s The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascensia, a group of misfit cult members are rendered with odd numbers of fingers and toes. Phillips’ choice plays into the broader narrative around the characters’ marginalization and new-found community. At the same time, the wonky fingers defy the guidelines around drawing hands that are taught in animation school. As online viewer @ Rosebloom notes in the comments under the video, Ascensia “rejects the alienation imposed by societal convention, be that convention as large as ableism or as small as the “rules” of animation.”
Like with her humour, the success of this gesture is in its subtlety. The stories and politics in Jonni’s work unfold slowly. There is also an inherent queerness to her films, which never surfaces in grandiose statements on identity or lived experience. Instead, the queerness of Jonni’s work feels more about gently poking fun at the institutions of family and work, challenging the parameters of her medium, and riffing on the (dis)comfort of coming into one’s own. There is also gender play in the androgyny of her characters and their voices. Regardless, something is resonating with people. Scrolling through her Youtube comments and Letterboxd reviews, one finds hundreds of people echoing the same sentiment: they feel seen.
The final sequence in Ascensia features “Hold on, Sailor”—a recording by the singer-songwriter Jenna Caravello. Like in Jonni’s films, Caravello’s lyrics sit in that bittersweet zone between hope and sorrow. You try to parse out what you’re feeling until you realize maybe it’s best to just let the emotion wash over you. The scene plays out and the quiet power of Phillips’ work takes hold once more.
Sometimes life can be misleading And you won’t get very far And some people don’t know what they need And bury who they are
This is all to say “How are you?” Treading water, castle burning All alone except for everyone On our asteroid turning
[Chorus x2]
So hold on sailor Hold on partner Your family will find you Your pain will guide you
Screening List
The Earth is Flat | 2016 | 5:29 Rachel and Her Grandfather Control the Island | 2017 | 5:04 Stilton’s in Charge | 2016 | 4:00 Goodbye Forever Party | 2017 | 19:43 The Final Exit of The Disciples of Ascensia | 2019 | 45:00 Barber Westchester (Trailer) | 2020 | 1:41
16+
Thursday, Sept 22 7:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Friday, Sept 23 3:00pm
OAG – Alma Duncan
Jeudi, 22 sept 19h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
Vendredi, 23 sept 15h00
GAO – Alma Duncan
Amy Kravitz: Monochrome Monarch by Keltie Duncan
“Many films are ‘about’ a topic, and have a message to deliver, or a story to tell. My films don’t embrace that approach. My intention is to create a non-verbal, visceral experience - an experience that transcends words. You have to understand the experience with your body, rather than with words.” - Amy Kravitz
Amy Kravitz’s reputation as an inspiring, compassionate, and influential teacher has perhaps led some to forget that she’s also a hell of an animation artist. The oeuvre-to-date of our 2022 Honorary President is a small but mighty tribute to the power of paper, composed of films which show what a skilled hand can do with simple black and white dry media and a fibrous surface.
Through her films, Kravitz defines what she calls “the pure language” of abstract animation and, both as a filmmaker and a beloved instructor at Rhode Island School of Art and Design (RISD), raises the bar for experimental filmmakers everywhere. Working in black and white and a few shades in between, Kravitz’s process is centred around working with or against the paper’s surface, casting the viscosity and density of inks and crayon as the main performer.
Her three early works, The River Lethe (1985), The Trap (1988), and Roost (1998) are each an experiential impression in concept and a love letter to the richness of texture in substance, fusing a bright, full-value grayscale image with an enriching and informative soundtrack. Her newest film, The Hour Coat (2022), is a triumphant return to filmmaking after a busy absence spent focusing on family and teaching, easily echoing the tone of her earlier work without missing a beat. The titular – and mythical – river in Lethe cleanses spirits of memories, allowing them to be reborn with a clean slate. Working via stream-of-consciousness, a method Kravitz says feels more authentic to her process, she addresses concepts around memory and loss by working the paper surface through addition and subtraction, creating a swirling balance of negative and positive space. The first of two collaborations with Caleb Sampson, Lethe’s soundtrack lays the perfect foundation to allow the film to sweep away our own reality, carrying off any worry if only for a few minutes.
The Trap, a film which aims to capture the imagined experience of a persecuted Jew travelling on a crowded train without food, water, belongings, and family to a death camp during World War II, leverages the potential bleakness of black contrasted with white to paint a devastating and terrifying picture. Struck while researching personal accounts of the holocaust by a particular question from author and holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel, who wondered why allied forces didn’t just bomb the train tracks knowing full well who was in them and where they were going.
Visually, a zippy series of starkly contrasted, quicklymoving shapes create the sense of whizzing by cold, harsh, unfamiliar landmarks and landscapes. The black and white palette drives home the feeling of utter helplessness from a situation devoid of warmth and hope. Kravitz’s signature media choices perfectly communicate her conceptualization of the awful experience it must have been to lose everything in such a way, feeling that it could easily have been stopped. Caleb Sampson’s soundtrack supports the scene of institutional and systematic imprisonment. Chilling tones and metallic sounds complete the picture perfectly, fully realizing the suggested message of the film.
By contrast, Roost, while existing in the same black and white monochromatic universe, uses a gauzier texture to tell a more hopeful tale. Inspired by two things – the piercing cry of a rooster crow she worked with while editing sound on a job and Issac Bashevis Singer’s story called “Cockadoodledoo” – Amy describes the context around making Roost:
Working with ink and non-absorbent paper to create a flurry of visual language, and incorporating a few graphic line drawings which hint at recognizable forms, Kravitz suggests a softer message, one of new life and new beginnings. The soundtrack, this time by Kravitz herself, is a rich cacophony of organic sounds and samples of music by experimental vocalist, Joan LaBarbara.
The Hour Coat, Kravitz’s latest film, also in Official Competition this year, is her longest to date and explores more fully the use of graphic line drawing and recognizable forms. A waistcoat twists and turns as it hovers ungrounded in space over an airy, wispy, grey, backdrop. Described simply as “between one life and the next”, The Hour Coat continues an exploration of softness that can be achieved by delving into greyscale strokes. The result is an ephemeral meditation on what lies beyond after we remove the cloak of life as we know it, showing Kravitz’s everdeepening range within the black and white spectrum.
On the gap between Roost and The Hour Coat, Kravitz says:
“I work slowly. Usually, whenever I try to do something quickly it just takes me LONGER. Over the past many years, I have had many responsibilities that have required extended attention. A colleague at RISD once told me, as we were discussing being teachers, mothers, and artists, that you can do two full-time jobs but you can’t do three full-time jobs. I had to earn a living (and I have a wonderful job that enables me to do that) and I would not compromise my family. Something had to give. My children are grown now, so I am able to spend more time again in my studio.”
Kravitz has had a long and balanced career thus far and continues to build her illustrious path forward as a beloved educator and artist. This screening package is quantifiable evidence of Kravitz’s deliberate nurturing of her unique filmmaking voice, but the rich ground on which she stood throughout the process also comes through in each frame. These films are a cohesive and impressive kicking-off point, and it will remain exciting to see what comes next.
Screening List
River Lethe | 1985 | 7:12 The Trap | 1988 | 5:12 Roost | 1999 | 4:12 The Hour Coat | 2022 | 12:40
I Forgot to Remember to Forget: The Films of Marko Tadić
by Chris Robinson
You may think that the memories themselves vanish every time there’s a disappearance, but that’s not true. They’re just floating in a pool where the sunlight never reaches. - The Memory Police (2019) by Yoko Ogawa
All memory is fiction. Fiction is a second rendering of a (possible) event. Then there are the photos and home movies. Sometimes I think my memories of a past moment are really just acquired from a photograph or home movie. I’ve confused them. Does it matter if my memory of myself is wrong? If I can imagine it, if I can dream it, isn’t it real?
That’s sort of the vibe going on throughout the work of Croatian animator and artist Marko Tadić. Shuffling documentary, history, and science-fiction, his films look to the past, but not necessarily a past that existed. In his films, he imagines utopia (I Speak True Things), a world with two moons (We Used to Call It: Moon), and an unhappy immortal (Borne by the Birds). There is a sense of loss, a ghostly vibe throughout, yet frequently Tadić seems to be toying with us because the loss isn’t necessarily real, only imagined.
Tadić’s road to animation, like so many, started in other worlds. After studying philosophy in Florence, he turned to painting. “I finished the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in painting, although I never painted,” says Tadić. “From the first year, I started with photography, and then drawing was the main thing that I did.” Animation and Tadić met during a residency programme in Santa Monica, California, in 2008. At the residency, there was no pressure to create anything. It was a place to go and relax. “I’m alone in L.A. with a few friends, but I was there for two months with plenty of time and a gigantic place—kind of like a car depot or garage or something,” recalls Tadić. “And in it was this huge blackboard. Out of boredom, I started to make drawings.” Later, Tadić grabbed “the smallest, shittiest camera” and started taking photos of the drawings. “My idea was, now I’m going to make one thousand drawings that I will physically not have, they will only be photos,” adds Tadić. “How am I going to show 1,000 photos? It’s going to be the worst presentation in the world.”
During that time, he became friends with two Austrian artists. One of them saw the blackboard and camera experiment and told him that he would be better off making an animation film instead of taking still photos. “And I was like, not a bad idea,” says Tadić. “So I started The Black Ouija Board. At first, it was awful. It was a few lines, tack-tack-tack, you know. But then with time, I was doing it for like 2 months, you know, and I got a little bit better. I intuitively got into the animation process. I took a lot of photos. And that’s my first animation.”
After the residency was completed, Tadić returned to Croatia, where he scrambled to get work done for a new show. “I was one of the four finalists for this contemporary art award here in Croatia,” says Tadić. “It’s the kind of thing where you apply and then six months later you have to do a solo show. I arrived home on Wednesday and the show was on Friday. Armed with jet lag and a Final Cut Pro, Tadić and a friend edited the film together and won the prize.”
The success encouraged Tadić to continue exploring animation. “It wasn’t like, ‘this is complete shit, don’t do it ever again’,” admits Tadić. “I did something completely new and different that I found interesting and that gave me this push.”
The Black Ouija Board (2008) is a ghostly lo-fi work about an apparent seance. The chalkboard drawings perfectly match the fleeting, fragile creepiness of the woman’s chilling moan that works as a recurrent riff for the film. Tadić lures us in, tempting us towards a resolution, but we’ve been tricked... the woman’s moans stop, and with them, the film. Essentially nothing happens.
“I was listening to old-time radio shows,” says Tadić. “That’s actually the clip inside the film. It’s like a seance, where that guy is actually trying to kill the woman and then her mom comes from the dead to tell her that he wants to kill her and whatever. And that’s like the seance part. And also in the animation, there’s the weird seance. And I really liked how it clicked. Just like that, poof, she’s gone. And then the film ends. It’s so weird and simple.”
Old radio shows, movies, and cartoons are a constant source of inspiration for Tadić. “While I was doing this film, I was filling it with a shovel every day with new stuff,” explains Tadić. “I was making these links between a landscape or at the time I was, let’s say, listening to Emma James or HP Lovecraft, and it was in that kind of atmosphere. It was this insane mix of content that I really enjoyed. And that’s how I got really stuck on animation.” With Tadić’s second film, I Speak of True Things (2010), you start to see the preoccupations that would continue throughout his body of work, notably the idea of utopia and urbanization. Like an animated architect, Tadić fuses past spaces with his
own architectural imaginings to create, essentially, new and impossible spaces. “Now everything is utopia this, dystopia that,” says Tadić. “But for me, it was formative. I grew up in Croatia and Yugoslavia. There was the war, and I was a kid, and all of a sudden this abstract fucking hell was happening. I like to think of my films as this subtle critique of everything. Then I could tell you they’re all utopian because I live in postwar Croatia, Yugoslavia. It’s a very bipolar place to live. That’s something I noticed about Serbia, Bosnia, and even Slovenia, but Slovenia is a bit different. Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje... all these are like islands. It’s like a time machine. I guess it’s okay, but it’s peculiar.”
Borne by the Birds (2013), explores the utopian idea of immortality through the tale of a 400-year-old man who wants to die. The idea started with an article Tadić read about a Chinese general who drank only green tea and ate leaves and lived to be 400 years old. “For me, it’s like ‘who can believe this shit’, you know?” says Tadić. “And then at the same time, it’s like the Wandering Jew—the story of this guy who lives forever and he sees everything. It was the perfect plot to start this journey with. This is a weird person travelling through the world because he’s got all the time in the world. And in the end, he wants death. He’s like...” no, I don’t want this. ‘This is too much.’”
This notion of “be careful what you wish for” has roots in the legend of Faust, who sold his soul to the devil for unlimited knowledge and wealth, only to grow bored with it all in the end. “For me, Faust is always a big part of almost every film,” admits Tadić. “This is just a brilliant story, mind-blowing. And that’s something. We are all cursed, everybody. There is this dire need to know; you always need more and more and more, to understand, see, hear, learn, whatever. You know, and that’s Faust. That’s Faustian; you’re unhappy all the time.”
Collage elements are a primary part of Tadić’s creative arsenal. Using old postcards, science magazine photos, and assorted found materials mixed with paint, chalk (which he eventually abandoned for health reasons) and drawings, Tadić takes these disparate elements to create his own fictional worlds with their own internal logic. As is the case with so many collage animators, impatience and lack of confidence in drawing skills were motivators for Tadić. “I can make a portrait with you, of course, but it’s going to take me a long time,” says Tadić. “First off, I don’t “draw” very often, and second, I’m not interested. There are people who love it, but I’m not one of those people. I like things to be quick. I don’t want to make a drawing for two days. Taking a magazine and cutting it up made everything faster. That’s probably something to talk about with a psychiatrist.”
There is also an anti-art aspect to collage. Its violent, imperfect nature takes the piss out of the preciousness of art. “It’s not glorifying art,” adds Tadić. “It’s not oil on canvas or something, it’s more about the process of art, about finding something out instead of creating this object that’s going to last forever and make you famous.”
Nostalgia is another impetus for using collage. Tadić’s use of old postcards harkens back to his youth when he collected postcards the way kids like me collected hockey cards. There’s a collaborative nature to this relationship. I would take hockey cards, for example, and make up my own teams and games. If I wanted a player on a different team, I’d cut out a logo and team name from a spare card and paste it over the player’s real team. It’s similar, albeit more mature, for Tadić. “It’s like my daily work,” says Tadić. “Going through thousands of beautiful old postcards. I love it. I use this material and I collaborate with this material. I would like to directly use the postcard. I etch away with a pen knife and I cut away the image, you know? So, in a way, the image becomes different. Everything is temporary. If I don’t use it now for something, then in a year’s time it’s just going to go to waste anyway.
The use of postcards and archival materials enhances the mysterious, sci-fi element of his work. In a sense, collage allows you to bring images from different times and spaces together to create new, impossible worlds. In Borne By The Birds (2013), Tadić uses old postcards as background scenery. “There’s this ‘Socrates prison’, there’s the fire in San Francisco, there’s the earthquake,” says Tadić. “The postcards themselves are quite interesting. You’d enjoy them as a slideshow, but animation enhances them and gives them something else to add to their already amazing history.” old notebooks to re-imagine that there was once a second moon before it was removed from our lives. Using the guise of an archive, Tadić imagines what a world with two moons might have been like and how its existence might have been conveyed through collective memories (e.g., kitschy postcards and drawings). Jaunting between fiction, documentary, and science-fiction, Tadić explores and critiques censorship, but inadvertently (the film was made before our world started drowning in lunatic conspiracy theories), touches upon a society struggling to separate truth from nonsense.
Tadić’s philosophy studies drip through his films. He’s not making films to please you; he’s making work to challenge you and him. Tadić is especially into philosophers like Plato and Thomas More, who convey their ideas in the form of something like a fable. “I like the narrative way to explain something that’s mind-blowing and interesting and political and literary and entertaining at the same time,” says Tadić. “That’s something I kept in my artistic practice. This approach is to try and say something with the work, not to make something nice to put on the wall. But to have like a million postcards talking about the second moon.”
There are no answers to be found in Tadić’s work. Nothing is resolved. There’s only constant change stemming from this Faustian hunger to continually seek. Despite the dour tones of Faust, there’s also something liberating about that whole idea of utopia. While not a damn one of us could ever come to an agreement on what makes perfection (most of us can’t even agree on what pizza to order), each of us at least has the power to imagine our own personal heaven. We don’t need to make deals with devils, all the tools are there inside of us, within reach. There’s something quite comforting in that. Whether memory or imagination, there’s a beauty in unearthing what might have been or simply imagining what could be. Often it’s healthier than just staring out at what is.
Screening List 16+
The Black Ouija Board | 2:31 | 2009 I speak true things | 5:45 | 2010 We Used to Call It: Moon | 4:15 | 2011 Borne By the Birds | 13:28 | 2013 Until a Breath of Air | 4:45 | 2015 Moving Elements | 6:40 | 2016 “1972-2004” | 6:04 | 2016 Events meant to be forgotten | 6:00 | 2020 LHD ‘The Tzar of Premantura’ | 4:39 | 2021 Temporary Form | 2022
Friday Sept 23 5:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Saturday, Sept 24 1:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Vendredi, 23 sept 17h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
Samedi, 24 sept 13h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
Special Delivery: The Films of John Weldon
by Mark Langer
Polymath, humourist, musician, artist, author, social observer, and a thorn in the side of convention – John Weldon is all of these things and more. Born May 11, 1945, Weldon seemed destined by education and training for a more conventional path than the arts. After graduating with a degree in mathematics and psychology at McGill, he enrolled in Education at Macdonald College. The experience convinced Weldon that a teacher’s life was not for him. This was followed by a year as an insurance actuary trainee. During this period of study and training, Weldon turned to creative pursuits, writing the musical “Genius Is a FourLetter Word” and creating his own comic book. On the basis of these, and with no formal training in the arts, Weldon was hired by the National Film Board of Canada in 1970.
Weldon was a product of the baby boom counter-culture of the 1960s, shaped by the same trends that had produced post-modernist re-inscriptions of older media forms, like Zap Comix, or Firesign Theatre’s Nick Danger, Third Eye. These works adopted the conventions of comics, movies, television and other media only to undermine them and critique their role in re-enforcing a system of hypocrisy and social control. Disney was a particular target, from Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s “Mickey Rodent” in MAD Magazine to the depictions in Air Pirates by Dan O’Neil, Bobby London and Gary Hallgren of Disney characters engaging in sex and drugs. Inspired by underground comix, Weldon created The Pipkin Papers — a 40-page work that was the first Englishlanguage underground comix in Quebec.
Many of Weldon’s early works were consistent with this new comix tradition, albeit tempered by a whimsy and irony lacking in the work of other comix artists. His Spinnolio (1977) begins with the prayer of a clockmaker to The Blue Fairy that the puppet he fashioned be turned into a real boy. Nothing happens, but the old man is convinced that Spinnolio the puppet has magically come to life. Thus begins the processing of the inanimate object as it rises through the education and corporate system until it is replaced by a computer. Abandoned on skid row, Spinnolio becomes a real person when the Blue Fairy finally appears to turn him into a middle-aged wino. The film neatly reverses the success story narrative of Pinocchio to follow the rise and fall of this object in a society where free will is irrelevant to one’s fate. In underground comix, the rejection of “Golden Age” comic aesthetics is synonymous with the rejection of commercial culture. Similarly, Spinnolio is drawn in a deliberately crude style that would become a Weldon hallmark, with animation that Weldon now characterizes as “a bit klutzy”.
The use of deliberately “hand drawn” aesthetics and the re-inscription of earlier media forms can be seen again in perhaps Weldon’s greatest critical success. Special Delivery (1978 – co-directed with Eunice Macaulay) is a “cartoon noir” that both uses the conventions of 1940s radio drama, and may be the first instance of full-frontal male nudity in an NFB film. The film’s protagonist, Ralph, is a typical Weldonian downtrod hero. Following a cascade of events beginning with his failure to shovel snow from his front steps, Ralph escapes consequences through the incompetence of the legal system and the postal carrier’s union. There was some resistance to making this film within the NFB. Weldon recalls “when it was put to a committee to decide if it should be made, one guy said ‘our films are supposed to be morally uplifting and this is about a guy who gets away with irresponsible, criminal acts! I thought that it was doomed until another guy said ‘Yeah, but it’s funny’, and so I got to make it.” It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Short Film (Animated) and the first prize at Animafest Zagreb.
Log Driver’s Waltz (1979) was made for the Canada Vignettes series, animated to a recording of the Wade Helmsworth song. Music was performed by the Mountain City Four, comprised of Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Jack Nissenson and Weldon’s cousin Peter Weldon. One of several such NFB films made under a contract from CBC as part of a larger government project to enhance national unity through culture, Log Driver’s Waltz transcended its original purpose to become a Canadian favourite and Weldon’s most-seen film, perhaps due to the ideal matching of animator and musicians.
Real Inside (1984 – co-directed with David Verrall) marks a return to critiques of bureaucracy and makes reference to earlier animated films, something hinted at in the combination of live-action and animation seen at the very beginning of Log Driver’s Waltz. Four years before Who Shot Roger Rabbit, Weldon drew on early animation traditions of combining live-action and animated characters. In this case, Buck Boom (the last name anglicized from “Ba-Boom!”), disillusioned with cartoon acting, seeks a career change to corporate administration. The interaction between the animated Buck Boom and the live-action Mr. Mugeon (played by Colin Fox) follows a trajectory consistent with Weldon’s concern about the incompatibility of human needs and social institutions. Eventually, both characters become liberated from the boundaries of convention by embracing the world of the other. Significantly, Weldon weaves a
narrative thread that critiques racism, as the animation character’s route to advancement becomes a metaphor for a larger human rights struggle.
Weldon has written “My personal #1 favourite of my own films is ‘To Be’. Two philosophy professors have told me that they use this film in their classes. And a young lady who lives in a difficult circumstance wrote to tell me that when she saw this film at age 14, it changed her life. One friend said, ‘I HATE that film. It makes you THINK!!’” Released in 1990, To Be is both a philosophical meditation and a riff on the teleportation premise of the then-recent David Cronenberg film The Fly (1986). To Be reflects the teletransport paradox that fascinated such thinkers as Stanislaw Lem and Derek Parfit. As Parfit put it, if a teletransporter were modified so it simply replicated an individual, what are the ontological implications of such a technology? Typically for Weldon, this question is addressed in an unpretentious manner, with the impressively hi-tech pods of The Fly now represented by two vintage refrigerators. Other technological components appear as surrealistically repurposed household appliances. The film marked another collaboration with Kate McGarrigle, who sang the song in a score that Weldon wrote.
John Weldon regards The Lump (1991) as his second favourite film. “Admittedly, I was really joking about universal politics. I’m also pleased with my minimalist approach, scraps of material and cut-out photos pushed around under the camera.” It was made during changes in management and deep budget cuts in the Animation Department. Many were let go or left to work elsewhere. At a time when animation was embracing slick new computer technologies, The Lump announced a contrarian view, made obvious when Weldon replicated the new, computer-generated NFB opening logo as a low-budget swirl of multicoloured paper cutouts. One is tempted to see this as a poke in the eye of company executives demanding austerity. The Lump serves not only as a satirical fable about political corruption but also as a statement about the hand-made and personal nature of Weldon’s approach to filmmaking. As opposed to the cutting-edge technology, The Lump is defiantly lowbudget, low-tech, and personal with Weldon composing the music as well as doing the stop-motion collage with scraps of fabric, wood, plasticine, and other materials. Characters’ faces include photos of Weldon’s friends and colleagues. Although panned by some critics who didn’t “get” Weldon’s aesthetic statement (critic and historian Karen Mazurkewich claimed “Weldon manipulates unsightly puppets … paying little attention to movement and flow”), the film was and remains a favourite, nominated for a Genie, winning OIAF’s Gordon Bruce Award for Humour, and is included (with Special Delivery) as one of the eight films on the NFB’s Animation Greats DVD. Like George in The Lump, the protagonist of Frank the Wrabbit (1998), is different from his peers. Intellectually gifted by virtue of his lima bean-sized brain, Frank is unable to explain his complex theology to rabbits. This time, Frank prevails over a hostile and life-threatening environment, achieving the positive ending of other Weldon heroes by having “long and happy years that followed” which lead to Frank’s death and deification. Frank the Wrabbit is significant due to John Weldon’s use of digital technologies. Rather than adapt to digital animation, Weldon makes the new technology conform to his collage aesthetics. Like The Lump, Frank the Wrabbit uses a mixture of contrasting styles, combining characters with visible pencil marks outlining digitally generated clothing patterns that move independently of those outlines. Sometimes movement is accomplished through traditional animation techniques and sometimes through digital distortion. The result bears a resemblance to the collage of materials used in The Lump but adapted to new technology.
Frank the Wrabbit acts as a precursor to the gently surrealistic The Hungry Squid (2002). The Hungry Squid continues Weldon’s love of folk music seen earlier in Log Driver’s Waltz, with the use of Arthur Scammel’s song “Squid-Jigging Ground”. In many ways the apotheosis of Weldon’s work, The Hungry Squid reiterates some of Weldon’s favourite themes – the mocking of scientists, psychological counsellors, religion, and other authority figures, skepticism of institutions and sympathy for an alienated protagonist trying to prevail in an indifferent or hostile world. Recalling The Lump through a combination of stop motion fabric puppets, photos, and computerassistancet (“my kind of thing”… “digital recylomation” according to Weldon) the film is perhaps the most charming of the filmmaker’s works, with its wacky yet gentle tale of a young girl’s scholastic and family problems being solved through the intercession of a giant squid and the Alberta Squid Jiggers’ Association. A favourite with both critics and audiences, The Hungry Squid has won seven awards internationally.
Retirement from the NFB has not meant retirement from creativity for Weldon. He continues to work on comix with his Ashcan Alley comic strip, available on his website Weldonalley.ca and short films combining live-action with animation, available on his Vimeo page (Vimeo.com/jfelix). The OIAF wishes him long and happy years to follow.
Screening List
14+
Log Driver’s Waltz | 1979 | 3:00 Spinnolio | 1977 | 9:00 Real Inside | 1984 | 11:00 To Be | 1990 | 10:00 The Lump | 1991 | 7:00 Frank the Wabbit | 1998 | 9:00 The Hungry Squid | 2002 | 14:00 Special Delivery | 1978 | 7:00
Thursday, Sept 22 11:00am
OAG – Alma Duncan
Saturday, Sept 24 11:00am
Arts Court Theatre
Jeudi, 22 sept 11h00
GAO – Alma Duncan
Samedi, 24 sept 11h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
16+
Thursday, Sept 22 3:00pm
OAG – Alma Duncan
Sunday, Sept 25 1:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Jeudi, 22 sept 15h00
GAO – Alma Duncan
Dimanche, 25 sept 13h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
Contemporary Chilean Animation / Animation chilienne contemporaine
In recent years, Chilean animation has demonstrated a notorious tendency toward transcendental themes in human, political, and reflective themes through aesthetic experimentation that is leaving a distinctive stamp marked by history. From the importance of materiality to new narrative approaches with more philosophical than moral foundations, Chilean animation is spontaneously breaking down the boundaries between the visual arts and animated film, placing these disciplines at the service of the questions that keep us alert in a world where chaos is constantly bursting into our lives. (Hugo Covarrubias) Au cours des dernières années, l’animation chilienne a démontré une tendance notoire vers les thèmes transcendantaux humains, politiques et réflexifs au moyen de l’expérimentation esthétique qui laisse une étampe distinctive marquée par l’histoire. De l’importance de la matérialité, aux nouvelles approches de narration dont les fondations sont davantage philosophiques que morales, l’animation chilienne brise spontanément les frontières entre les arts visuels et les films animés, plaçant ces disciplines au service des questions qui nous tiennent en alerte dans un monde où le chaos éclate constamment dans nos vies. (Hugo Covarrubias)
Screening List / Liste des projections
Bestia | Hugo Covarrubias | 16:00” Cantar con Sentido (Singing With Meaning) | Leonardo Beltrán, Cecilia Toro | 22:00” Los Huesos | C. León, J. Cociña | 15:00” Deshabitada | Camila Donoso | 7:00” Algo en el Jardín | Marcos Sánchez | 6:00” Historia de un Oso | Gabriel Osorio | 10:00” Waldo’s Dream | Jorge Campusano, José Ignacio Navarro, Santiago O’Ryan | 3:13” Immersed | Soledad Águila | 3:50”
Theodore Ushev: Unseen Connections
Borislav Kolev Bulgaria/Canada 2022 78:00 14+
Thursday, Sept 22 5:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Sunday, Sept 25 3:00pm
Arts Court Theatre
Jeudi, 22 sept 17h00
Cour des arts Théâtre
Dimanche, 25 sept 15h00
Cour des arts Théâtre Theodore Ushev, the auteur behind worldrenowned animated shorts such as Tower Bawher, Gloria Victoria, Oscar®-nominated Blind Vaysha and his masterful The Physics of Sorrow, reveals his inner universe, formed by a half-century of personal experience acquired in a constantly changing world.
In this feature documentary by Borislav Kolev, Ushev reminisces about the “unseen connections” in his life—biographical and historical, cultural and subcultural. Connections that shaped him as a person and an artist.
Constantly interlacing a so-called “objective” reality and the parallel reality constructed by Ushev in his films and conceptual visual works, Theodore Ushev: Unseen Connections sends viewers on a trip through time and space. They witness a variety of past events, ranging from the funny and the sad to the downright absurd. And they learn much about the artist and his world. Auteur de courts métrages d’animation de renommée mondiale tels Tower Bawher, Gloria Victoria, le film nommé aux Oscars® Vaysha l’aveugle et le magistral Physique de la tristesse, Theodore Ushev dévoile ici son univers intérieur, somme d’un demi-siècle d’expériences personnelles vécues dans un monde en perpétuel changement.
Dans ce long métrage documentaire de Borislav Kolev, Theodore Ushev se remémore les «liens invisibles» de sa vie : des liens personnels et historiques ou se rattachant à la culture et à la sous-culture. Des liens qui ont façonné la personne et l’artiste qu’il est aujourd’hui.
Theodore Ushev : liens invisibles entrecroise sans cesse la réalité dite objective et la réalité parallèle que crée Theodore Ushev dans ses films et ses œuvres visuelles conceptuelles. Le film nous transporte à travers le temps et l’espace. Surgissent divers événements du passé, tantôt amusants, tantôt tristes ou carrément absurdes, qui éclairent largement l’artiste et son univers.
14+
Sunday, Sept 25 7:00pm 9:00pm
ByTowne Cinema
Dimanche, 25 sept 19h00 21h00
Cinéma ByTowne
Best of OIAF 22
The Best of Ottawa program showcases audience favourites and award winners from the 2022 Ottawa International Animation Festival competition. The screenings offer a sampling of exceptional animated short films that explore moments of humour, profundity, and inspiration. The works in this collection provide a unique cross-section of some of the best contemporary film artists from around the world. Le programme Le meilleur d’Ottawa met en lumière les choix préférés du public et les gagnants de la compétition de 2022 du Festival international d’animation d’Ottawa. Les projections offrent un échantillon de courts métrages animés exceptionnels qui explorent des moments d’humour, de profondeur et d’inspiration. Les œuvres de cette collection fournissent un exemple unique de quelques-uns des meilleurs cinéastes contemporains de partout au monde.
