Autumnal outings

Some events comin' up for ya. The Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival's I'M FINE! programme put together in collaboration with Skwigly is getting itself another screening in Lviv this Friday, November 24th. This one will be happening 6:30pm at America House and is completely free. You can register for it here.

On that subject, the fourth I'M FINE! podcast minisode from our filmmaker Q&A sessions is online now (stream/download), featuring insights from Konrad Hjemli, Jakob Eiring (Pandiculation) and Anna Samo (Conversations With A Whale).

Another event coming up that I, in all honesty, had just about nothing to do with is the premiere of Ainslie Henderson's Shackle, which will get its first public outing at London International Animation Festival on Nov 25th. Laura-Beth played a significant part in developing the eye mechanisms of the puppets and, frankly, I'm a pretty big Ainslie fan so I felt like giving it a shout-out. Also screening will be the feature-length mixed-media documentary A Cat Called Dom by longtime collaborator and Shackle producer Will Anderson, as well as Will's short film Betty. It starts 6:10pm at The Barbican and all told it looks to be a great way to kick off the festival, so check it out if you're in the city.

Speaking of Laura-Beth, which we sort of were, there's another chance to catch her recent short film Crafty Witch (on which I slapped some post-FX and noises) as part of the Cardiff Animation Festival touring programme of 2022 award winners. If you're in or about Milford Haven on the 30th swing on by the Torch Theatre for 8pm (more info here).

A little earlier than that, on the 25th Crafty Witch (or Ravasz Boszorkány) will get a Hungarian screening at the Anilogue International Animation Festival in Budapest. It will be part of the micro-shorts screening Ultrarövid Animációk that takes place 8pm at Toldi Art Mozi. Grab your passes here.

Box Trawls

Our Skwigly guest spot at the London Animation Club earlier this week was a massive success. Thanks to everyone who came out and especially to Martin again for having us, hopefully you all enjoyed it as much as we did! For those who weren't able to make it I got the impression some of it was filmed and I believe that will go up at some point down the line, so keep checking their website.

In the meantime I've uploaded a special Lightbox compilation video I edited together as part of our presentation. It's impossible to do a complete 'best-of' in 20 minutes but this I think gives an impression of the range and scope of our coverage, from emerging up-and-comers to established Oscar-winners.

The video features snippets our chats with Mikey Please, Dan Ojari, Robert Kondo, Dice Tsutsumi, Bill Plympton, Torill Kove, Will Anderson, Ainslie Henderson, Will Becher, Patrick Osborne, Kristina Reed and Jeff Turley. Don't forget you can watch all of their interviews plus many more in full over at our official channel.

For those of you based up North, I strongly urge you to check out This Is Not A Cartoon, a new Skwigly venture in association with the BFI Film Hub. The events have been programmed primarily by Jen Hall of Manchester's Cornerhouse/HOME, the first of which taking place April 24th at the Stoke-on-Trent Science Centre featuring a live Q&A with the aforementioned Ainslie Henderson, director of Monkey Love Experiments and I Am Tom Moody. For more info on the programme and upcoming events head over to the website.

Nom Nom Noms

The Oscar and BAFTA nominations for 2015 have now both been announced, which I've taken as a cue for a bit of reflection on some films of note.
Leading the charge are Dice and Robert of Tonko House, whose film The Dam Keeper is an astounding concept-art-come-to-life piece of work. If asked to put together a 'Top 10' list of the best films of the past year it'd easily be amongst them. Proof of which is viewable at Revue 24 Images, for which I (along with numerous other more accomplished critics and curators) was asked to put together a 'Top 10' list of the best films of the past year. See, I zigged when you thought I was gonna...well, zig probably.
If your clicking finger is broken then the other films I picked are:

Coda (Dir. Alan Holly)

The Missing Scarf (Dir. Eoin Duffy)

Poils (Dir. Delphine Hermans)

Lost Property (Dir. Åsa Lucander)

Timber (Dir. Nils Hedinger)

La Petite Casserole d'Anatole (Dir. Éric Montchaud)

Duet (Dir. Glen Keane)

The Planets (Dir. Andy Martin)

Wackatdoo (Dir. Benjamin Arcand)

The lists were compiled by Marco de Blois who, amongst other laudable animation-related activities, is the main programmer for Quebec's Sommets du Cinéma d’Animation. As this Cartoon Brew article makes clear, one thing I can't be accused of is going with the crowd. That being said, many of the other critics' favourites would easily make my top 20 (also some folks cheated a bit and picked films from the year before, but what am I, the list police?). In fact, for the sake of why-the-hell-not, here's my next ten favourites of last year:

Submarine Sandwich (Dir. PES - this one would've made the original list but was released just after)
Monkey Love Experiments (Dir. Will Anderson, Ainslie Henderson)

Symphony No. 42, Réka Bucsi
Pilots on the Way Home (Dir. Priit Pärn, Olga Pärn)

Phantom Limb (Dir. Alex Grigg)

Me and My Moulton (Dir. Torill Kove)

Things Don't Fit (Dir. Tim Divall)
Montenegro (Dir. Luiz Stockler)

The Weatherman and The Shadowboxer (Dir. Randall Okita)

365 (Dir. Brothers McLeod)

Give those all some investigation, my lovelies. Anyway, our first Lightbox of 2015 is on the making of The Dam Keeper. Seriously, if you haven't come across this film yet at all, treat yourself to a peek here:

You can also hear more from Rob and Dice in episode 25 of the Skwigly Podcast.
Also in the running are Daisy Jacobs, Joris Oprins, Disney with Feast and, happily, Torill Kove of the NFB, who I interviewed during the production of the film.
Aside from the comparatively indie Song of the Sea, the feature film noms were all fairly predictable. Though I'm not so up-in-arms about The Lego Movie being ignored I would've loved to see Bill Plympton's Cheatin' and Signe Baumane's Rocks In My Pockets in with a shot. Que cera cera. Fortunately this arrived today so I can start my weekend off right:

Going back to the shorts, Alan Holly's Coda really stood out to me last year and I urge everyone to keep their eyes open for it:

That this film and Glen Keane's Duet (admittedly more successful as an interactive experience) didn't make the nominations is a massive shame - I've yet to see Plympton's Footprints but I'm sure I'd feel similarly - massive kudos to them at any rate for getting shortlisted.
Also worth mentioning that amongst the BAFTA noms was Will and Ainslie's Monkey Love Experiments, which has already won itself a Scottish BAFTA but one more wouldn't hurt.

Fantastic stuff from those two, though this one will probably remain my favourite for a good long while:

Cotton Anniversary

It seems like only two years ago that we began the Skwigly Animation Podcast, mainly as it has. So my time perception is functioning highly, which is nice.

This month's entry also marks our twentieth episode and doesn't disappoint on the guest front, with Steve chatting to the spectacular The Eagleman Stag director Mikey Please on his new film Marilyn Myller while Laura-Beth brings us some insight from Ainslie Henderson on his crowdpleasing short I Am Tom Moody as well as his collaborative work with the equally-talented Will Anderson. Also featured are Vivien Halas, currently in charge of preserving the legacy of UK studio Halas and Batchelor, and BAA sting winner Jack David Evans.

Also marking the anniversary is a slightly-tweaked version of our Selections From the Skwigly Podcast compilation I originally put together for a promotional CD last year. Featured on it are some of our most noteworthy guests from the first year, including Peter Lord, Genndy Tartakovsky, John Kricfalusi, Bill Plympton, Billy West, Brian Cosgrove, Barry Purves, Robert Morgan and Signe Baumane among others. Since then we've been privileged enough to get such equally notable talents as Eric Goldberg, Adam Elliot, Joanna Quinn, Richard Williams, Chris Landreth, Daniel Sousa, Chris Shepherd, Jerry Beck, Michaela Pavlátová, Lauren MacMullen, John DiMaggio, Richard Starzak, Kirsten Lepore, Daniel Greaves and Marc James Roels, with many more lined up for the rest of this year. I'm pretty proud of what we've managed to achieve and that we've stuck with it rather than let it peter out, which has been the fate of a lot of similar endeavours out there.
All of this is irrelevant, however, as for the third time in five years everything in my life has to take a back seat to the news that, once again: FAITH NO MORE are back!

Granted, it's a support slot, but I'm not exactly going to sniff at getting to see Black Sabbath as well, am I? Or Lemmy, fer chrissakes?
Okay, I get it, I'm old. But in my defense, these bands were already old when I was a kid, so I'm not that old. Just an old soul. A merry old soul.

Oy, with that white balance...

 

One of the lingering Skwigly projects I finally knocked on the head during my time away (mainly by scrapping the laboured first attempt and doing a simplified re-edit from scratch) is our first proper documentary covering the animation scene of 2013. Given it's a pretty mammoth event, the first doc is centered entirely on the Annecy International Animated Film Festival which myself and Steve visited last summer.

I'm pretty proud of the amount of coverage we managed to get done and it's one of the most longform video editing projects I've undertaken in a good long while. Given that it was shot using basic, high street HD camcorders I think it comes off as pretty watchable. While some higher-end technology might bolster the slickness of this type of video, really it's the talent of our interviewees who agreed to be involved that sells it. The line-up includes Marcel Jean, Eric Goldberg, Lauren MacMullan, Robert Morgan, Isabel Peppard, Ainslee Henderson, Will Anderson, Bill Plympton and Chris Landreth, with contributions from Corrie Francis Parks, Kris Genjin, Robbe Vervaeke, Jamie Badminton and Sarah Gomes Harris.

You can stream it online or direct download it, either way if you enjoy it please share it around as I'd love for this to be one of the strands of what we do that has the opportunity to evolve. If nothing else, it should make you appreciate the podcast all the more for not having to look at these two creeps:

Ee-yikes...