We've got ourselves one more October screening coming up for my cartooney li'l parable
Sunscapades. The kids will be returning to Montreal for a special Halloween screening put together by the fabulous folks at
Productions Antichambre and
Festival Courts d'un Soir who included the film in their 2019 official selection
back in April. Head to
Anticafé Vieux-Port 6:30pm October 28th (coincidentally my day o' birth) for
AntiMOVIE spécial horreur which looks to be a fun night indeed.
There are also a couple of festivals coming up in November you can catch the film at - on this side of the pond
Sunscapades will be part of the line-up of the
Norfolk Film Festival, which seems like a relatively modest affair but sees me in pretty good company judging by the trailer:
The festival will take place November 17th at the
Norwich Puppet Theatre. Keep an eye on their
Facebook page for updates as they come.
The following day
Magma - Mostra di Cinema Breve will kick off its 18th edition that runs from November 18th through to the 23rd. No specifics as of yet but let's just say there's a good chance a certain troublemaking trio may make an appearance.
This is a different event to the
Magma Short Film Festival that screened
The Naughty List back in 2011 but I'm sure it's just as magmatic. Why, probably more so!
To shift away from my own self-love for a minute, I want to bring up something quite dear to my heart that I hope you folks can spare a sec for.
I've made no secret of my fondness and admiration for the work of the extremely talented and prolific Rosto, whose music and art I've written about at some length across various outlets in recent years. A
friend of Skwigly and significant contributor to the my book
Independent Animation,
the man's enthusiasm and passion for his work was clearly demonstrated by
the sheer volume of his output.
With musical origins dating back to the
early nineties, Rosto’s interactive graphic novel project
Mind My Gap ran from 1999-2014 and spawned a number of multi-award-winning animated shorts along the way, including
(the rise and fall of the legendary) Anglobilly Feverson,
The Monster of Nix,
No Place Like Home,
Lonely Bones (the concluding chapter of
Mind My Gap) followed by the continuing adventures of the metaphysical band
Thee Wreckers with
Splintertime and his final film
Reruns.
Not too long before his all-too-premature passing I was enormously honoured to be approached by Rosto to consult on and proof-read what would be a significant career milestone, the physical graphic novel adaptation of
Mind My Gap.
When we last spoke he told me he'd finished a mock-up but I didn't know what the ultimate fate of the book would be until recently learning that
Autour de Minuit are aiming for a physical release book/music combo as he had originally envisioned.
Through an incentive-driven crowdfunding campaign that officially
launched a few days ago, fans of Rosto’s work can pre-order the set as well as a
variety of other milestones of the artist’s legacy, such as the full
Thee Wreckers Tetralogy on DVD/BluRay, earlier works including the original
Mind My Gap shorts trilogy and
The Monster of Nix, a limited edition 180g vinyl LP (I leapt on this) and an assortment of prints, collectibles and rarities.
If you've not yet seen the man's work at the very least let this serve as an introduction to it - it's an incredibly gratifying and inspiring rabbit hole to go down. And if you have some cash on hand for some fun animation goodies, well, there's a whole heap of them to be found here.
