November News Dump

This week on Skwigly our tradition of bringing our lovely listenership a taste of the KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival has continued, with another batch of podcast minisodes released featuring all of this year's filmmaker Q'n'A sessions. This time around the interviews are hosted by Anna Eijsbouts, who herself was featured as one of the directors in our recent Cardiff Animation Festival minisode series earlier this year with her film Hate For Sale. These chats span a huge gamut of perspectives and insights into student, indie and professional filmmaking so definitely give them some of your time. You can listen to the full set of minisodes below:
Speaking of festivals, don't forget that next week is the fourth edition of the Manchester Animation Festival, fast becoming one of the industry's most exciting fests and boasting its best line-up to date. As well as the usual programmes there are special events including a Barry Purves retrospective and behind-the-scenes presentations for Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires, Isle of Dogs, This Magnificent Cake and The Highway Rat, not to mention a whole heap of panels loaded with industry wisdom if that's what you're in the market for.

Of course the event with the most bang for its buck is the cheap-as-free Skwigly Screening, another selection of excellent shorts (plus Sunscapades for filler) that aren't playing elsewhere at the festival. These were personally hand-picked from various showcase scoutings and festival preselections I've been involved with over the last year or so as well as a couple of recommendations from the MAF team that didn't quite make the official selection. These screenings are always a joy to put together and I hope some of you can check it out. It'll take place 5pm Wednesday November 14th at the Event Space in the festival's main venue HOME. The full list of films are as follows:

• Living Like Heta (Dir. Bianca Caderas/Isabella Luu/Kerstin Zemp)
• Donald Trump Watching The Voice (Dir. Joost Lieuwma)
• Ooze (Dir. Kilian Vilim)
• Thirsty (Dir. Oscar Barany)
• Room (Dir. Michał Socha)
• Winston (Dir. Aram Sarkisian)
• The Hanging of Cowboy Benny (Dir. Joost Lieuwma)
• Haley and Joanna (Dir. Laura Jayne Hodkin)
• Adam (Dir. Emma Allen)
• Sunscapades (Dir. Ben Mitchell)
• Flipped (Dir. Hend Esmat/Lamiaa Diab)
• Letting Go (Dir. Ülo Pikkov)
• Fortune Telling at the Airport (Dir. Joost Lieuwma)

Immediately afterward in the same room Steve and I will be torturing festivalgoers with another edition of our infamous Skwigly Quiz. The questions will kick your arse but the prizes will be pretty amazing so you may as well try your luck. On the following day (the 15th) you should also swing by the Student Films Panorama to catch Laura-Beth Cowley's wonderful Boris-Noris. The one will be at 2:20pm at Cinema 2.

Also on the 15th I can confirm the screening time for Sunscapades at the Abertoir International Horror Festival of Wales will be at 3pm for Short Films Competition Part 1. The festival takes place at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Ceredigion, Wales and should be a blast, so check out the full schedule here and swing by if you can.  

Right after that will be the Rome Independent Film Festival, an event that will see Sunscapades return to the fragrant shores of Italy. You can catch it in the shorts programme that will kick off at 4:20pm at the Nuovo Cinema Aquila on Monday November 19th!

Meanwhile, back here in the rainy U of K, the BFI will be presenting a special preview of a new BBC4 documentary Secrets of British Animation followed by an onstage chat with the director Seb and the legendary Joanna Quinn, who I gather is featured quite prominently in the documentary (rightly so). I've not seen it yet but having had some peripheral involvement in it I can definitely say it's been put together with a lot of love and consideration. Plus hearing Joanna talk animation is always a joy, so if you can get yourself a ticket you won't regret it. Right now the broadcast date isn't 100% confirmed but I'll follow up when I know for sure.

One last November nugget to nibble on is the excellent news that, following the first game's release on Nintendo Switch earlier this year, The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle - Episode 2: A Bleaker Predicklement will be doing likewise on the 22nd! Be sure to get it downloaded and treat yourselves to more puzzles, puns and dubious, hopefully-not-actually-offensive accents from my good self.
Now g'wan and get back to work, you.

My Crowd

Another March screening for Klementhro has snuck its way into the schedules. The kind folks at Bilbao's Animakom Fest have chosen to include it in their screening Krazykom, a "screening of crazy short films" that will take place after the main award ceremony. If any Animakom-goers fancy checking it out it will be at 11pm March 18th at the BBF Dock. Gracias!
Now to steer the discussion towards a couple of other films I tainted with my involvement. Firstly the never-not-wonderful Jo Hepworth has released her short film The Urban Fox (that may very well feature a couple of tracks from The Birdcage playing in the background) online:

This one wasn't pushed much at festivals, though some of you may have seen it at KLIK! last year or my MAF screening back in 2015. Either way, you can see it now in all its glory. I chatted with Jo a bit about making the film as part of my series of KLIK! podcast minisodes last year, have a listen below: Another film worth keeping your eyes open for is Laura-Beth Cowley's thesis film Boris-Noris that I did some post-production work on. It was just finished this past January but there are a few festival appearances already lined up, the first of which will be at Allentown, Pennsylvania's Alternative Gallery for the Open World Animation Festival. Here's a trailer to whet your whettables:

The festival kicks off on March 23rd and runs until the 26th. I'll post up upcoming, closer-to-home screenings as they come along but in the meantime (or for those of you who may be on that side of the pond already) you can learn more at the fest's event page.

KLIK Tracks

Despite not being able to attend the event in person, I'm happy to be carrying on last year's tradition of Skwigly mini-podcasts for the KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival. As before these consist mainly of short Q&As with attending filmmakers conducted by German animation historian Hans Walther. These include chats with Giovanni Braggio (Cthupid), Junaid Chundrigar (Fixed Fairy Tales: The Princess & the Pea), Fleur Odylle of in60seconds (Manfred the Monkey), Artūrs Lācis (Versus), Carolina Cruz (Balbina: Das IST, die Zeit ist ein Egoist), Evelyne Dubois (Home Sweet Home), Nyan Kyal Say (My Life I Don't Want) and Daphna Awadish (Journey Birds)
One of the talkshow sessions unfortunately got misplaced and so to fill the remaining filmmaker slot my stalwart pal Jo Hepworth gave me some time to discuss her own KLIK! entry The Urban Fox, a lovely piece of work some of you may have caught when I screened it at MAF last year.
You can stream all the entire series below or, if you'd prefer, you can download episodes one, two and three respectively - gratis and for keepsies! Man alive do I ever treat ya right.

KLIK! Bait

Since returning from KLIK! and its brief respite from what has to be classified as one of the most stressful and busy periods of my professional life (I love it, but I love to complain too) I've managed to piece together a brand new series of Skwigly podcast minisodes, something we haven't done in a while. The first three episodes feature excerpts from the festival's Filmmaker Talkshow sessions hosted by animation buff Hans Walther.

Unfortunately due to an audio glitch with the recordings provided not all of the interview sessions could be included but there's a lot of great insight from attending filmmakers Natali Voorthuis, Roman Klochkov, Stephanie Blakey, Laura d'Addazio, Alexandre Mailleux, Frederic Siegel, Veronica Montaño, Manuela Leuensberger, Lukas Suter, Sacha Feiner, Marilyn Haddad, Monique Almelle Renault, Susanna Szabo, Eugenia Pashkina, Liz el Saadany, Fela Bellotto, Lalita Brunna and Marieke Blaauw of Job, Joris and Marieke.
In episode four I meet the remaining two-thirds of said studio, Job Roggeveen and Joris Oprins, discussing their body of work that includes the fantastic Mute, the Oscar-nominated A Single Life and their most recent short (Otto). Also in the final episode I meet festival director Yvonne van Ulden, catch up with the brilliant PES about what he's been up to since last year's podcast appearance and speak with Cartoon Saloon's Tomm Moore about his involvement in the multi-artist animated feature The Prophet. You can listen to all four episodes via our Skwigly at KLIK! playlist below:
On top of the podcasts you can also read my report on the festival as a whole (as well as some personal highlights from the official selection) over on Film Hub NWC, the fantastic organisation behind This Is Not A Cartoon and who provided a bursary that helped make the trip over to KLIK! possible.
Special thanks to Tünde Vollenbroek, Samuele Mini, Jen Hall and Alison Kennedy. Here's hoping I'll be back over there next year!