March Bits

Hey there good buddies. A little bit o' Speed news for ya with the unveiling of the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAAFI)'s 2021 official selection. These lovely Canucks also gave Sunscapades some love a couple years ago, so they're aces in my book. This time around my film will be part of the suitably-titled Oddball Collection (Shorts 6) at 3pm Toronto time on March 27th. I may even make a virtual appearance of some kind if y'all are super, super lucky. Grab your tickets here.

A little bit before then on the 25th Laura-Beth and I are presenting a special Skwigly screening with our good pals at Cardiff Animation Nights. It's gonna be a great hour of top-notch animation (including Will Anderson's incredible new film Betty, pictured above) with some Q&As to boot. As usual that one will be a free stream via their YouTube channel kicking off at 8pm and won't be staying up once it's done, so be sure to not miss it!

Another project Laura-Beth and I both worked on (a good few years ago now) was the Brazilian preschool series Lendas Animadas, which I gather is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. Alas it doesn't appear to be accessible outside of Brazil, but if you have young'uns and are based in South America this might be something fun to plonk them down in front of. It was certainly a fun one to work on.

Also worth mentioning that the recent BBC Arts/Calling the Shots film The Life and Times of a Witch Bottle animated by Laura-Beth (on the heels of her own witchy film The Gift), is the subject of an online event being put together by The Folklore Society that takes place at 6pm on the 23rd. Laura-Beth will be speaking about the film alongside researchers Owen Davies and Nigel Jeffries of the AHRC who conceived the film as part of BBC Arts Culture in Quarantine's Animated Thinking series. Head to Eventive for more info and tickets.

Ridin' them coattails again

 

Happy Monday, gang! Following its TV broadcast earlier this year there's some festival news for Laura-Beth Cowley's latest film The Gift, made for BBC Arts/Calling The Shots and on which I animated and made various unpleasant noises. These will all be online events and all look like great fun so give 'em some consideration.

Down Mexico way it will be among the official selection for Macabro FICH, which takes place August 25th-30th. I'm not exactly sure if there are fixed programme times or if the screenings will be accessible for the duration as there's no English version of the site and I'm an uneducated fool who can barely speak his own language at the best of times, let alone Spanish.

Another exciting inclusion taking place around the same time is this year's edition of Arrow Video Frightfest. This is the second time I've been able to ride the coattails of someone else's film getting in to this particular festival and I'm enthusiastic to see how the digital version comes together. The Gift will be part of the Short Films Showcase 2 that festivalgoers can stream from 6pm on August 27th through to 9pm on the 31st. Tickets are a measly £5 and you can grab 'em up here. Also worth a reminder that right afterward Laura-Beth and I will be helping out our pals at Cardiff Animation Nights for their August programme that starts at 8:15pm on YouTube, so that's your evening sorted!

The following week the Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival will be taking place, starting on September 2nd through to the 6th. Having featured Laura-Beth's previous film Boris-Noris back in 2017 (as well as my film Klementhro the previous year) these folks have further cemented their reputation for good taste by featuring both The Gift and my latest film Speed this year. The Gift will be among the Ladies First programme showcasing standout new work by female directors and Speed can be seen as part of the special screening #KillMePlease curated by Skwigly comrade Aaron Wood.

A couple months further down the line the film will be participating in the first season of the Nosferatu Film Festival, a triannual event focused of indie horror films that will be taking kicking things off in October/November. More info on that one when it comes, in the meantime you can follow the film's Facebook page and Instagram for updates.

April Drizzle

As the world is generally moving a little slower these days I inevitably have less to post about, but this week's seen a bit of a clump of nifty updates I can share. Firstly the amazing Laura-Beth Cowley's latest film The Gift (made last year with Calling the Shots/BBC Arts and on which I was privileged to contribute some animation and sound) will be getting its broadcast premiere this Sunday evening on BBC as part of a special BBC Introducing Arts programme Get Animated! You can get a sneaky preview of what to expect here and be sure to tune in to BBC4 at 10:55pm to catch it - it'll also be available on BBC iPlayer afterwards.

After a long period of radio silence following its much-loved festival run, there are some rumblings of activity coming from the Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires camp in the form of a newly-revamped website for production studio Animortal and a recently-released behind-the-scenes featurette on the film itself. Have a gander above to see some of the incredible work that went into it (you may even catch a little breakdown of my own contributions to the VFX and compositing at around the 3:20 mark). Fingers crossed we'll hear some word of a release in the near future...

Meanwhile the wonderful Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film has, like many events for the foreseeable future, migrated its programme to a special online edition running from May 5th-10th. Having been involved in the festival as both press and as a filmmaker in the past I had been set to attend in a third capacity, this time as part of the International Competition Jury - but alas, I ain't goin' nowhere. We will, however, be convening online and I can assuredly say this year's selection of films is a uniquely strong and consistent cross-section of some of the best work around and I can't recommend checking this online iteration out enough. You can find out more info here but in short there are three options for experiencing the festival - a free edition, equivalent to their open-air Festival on Schlossplatz; streaming access to the entire official selection for 9.99€; and, for professionals, the Pro edition grants digital access to an assortment of masterclasses, presentations and the complete animated video market for 19.99€. When you think of what you're saving on air fare and accommodation it really is a steal, so check out the festival website for more info.

If life durin' lockdown is starting to drag you might want to get yourselves caught up on our new Skwigly podcast series Skwigly Film Club in which myself, Steve, Laura-Beth and possibly others down the line babble over a variety of animated feature films. Since we launched it a few weeks back with Don Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day we've since hit play on Adam Elliot's Mary and Max, Claude Barras's My Life as a Courgette (or Zucchini, depending on which side of the pond you're on) and Gerald Potterton's Heavy Metal. I'm sure episodes to come will be even more diverse and if anyone wants to weigh in with their suggestions, thoughts, memories and suchlike be sure to keep in touch via our Twitter and Facebook as the series continues.