Onward

And we made it to 2019. Go us.
While 2018 was a very positive year for work and creative endeavours, in the real world we had a barrage of sadnesses to deal with that all came to a head in December. Such is life and its strange, at times arbitrarily cruel ways. Needless to say I am in awe of my wife, whose incomparable beauty in body and soul is matched by immeasurable selflessness under the hardest of circumstances. Would that we should all be so lucky to have such people in our lives and be better in ourselves as a consequence; maybe the world would be less streaked with the impotent rage and entitlement and fear that seems to be driving us forward these days.
Ultimately right now I'm in a bit of a bubble where most of the stuff I write about on here (chiefly the podcastey/cartooney stuff), seems especially frivolous and my energy to accompany news updates with not-especially-pithy asides is pretty much nil. But I do continue to have enormous gratitude and respect for the arts festivals and magazine/podcast guests that give me their time, not to mention my employers and students, and so for the next little while I'll try and keep this site updated when I can, but if it seems a little more dry and methodical than usual, well, this is why. That was a long, clunky sentence.

Firstly a little correction, last month I mentioned that the In-Short Film Festival based in Lagos (not to be confused with the near-identically-named InShort Film Festival) had selected Sunscapades to screen although the info they supplied was a little vague. Suspicions proved valid as it turns out they had been telling everyone who was preselected (possibly everyone who submitted) that their work had gone through so that they would spread awareness of the festival and boost its social media presence. Be it an innocent mistake or deliberate chicanery it's pretty poor form either way so I'd flag this event as one to avoid in future. Even this many years in I still occasionally learn lessons about being more discerning in which festivals to submit to and I guess this was one of those occasions.

Fortunately there are some more reputable events that Sunscapades will be involved with this month. Firstly I'm really pleased to again be part of the London Short Film Festival following Klementhro's inclusion back in 2017. This time around I'll be part of the New Shorts: Animation Variety Showcase on Sunday January 13th, 4pm at the Regent Street Cinema.

Then for the film's German debut another festival to have previously included Klementhro is the British Shorts Film Festival based in Berlin. They'll be screening Sunscapades in Festival Screening #3 at the Sputnik Kino on Friday January 18th at 11pm.

The following night the film sees its Belgian premiere at the Brussels Independent Short Film Festival: Courts Mais Trash in their Unclassifiables 2 section. This one will be at 7:30pm at Les Riches-Claires.
And that's it for now. Be excellent to each other, my friends.

There's just no sinking the bugger

Yet more adventures for our pal Klementhro coming up this month and next. Firstly there's the Big Cartoon Weekend in Saint Petersburg, another offshoot of Russia's Big Cartoon Festival as its name suggests. Klementhro will play in the third programme 'Borrowed Time' that kicks off 7pm on Sunday July 29th at the Rodina Cinema, rubbing shoulders with some fantastic other films such as The Burden, Catherine and Mr. Madila.

Following that will be an early August screening at Ukraine's Lviv International Short Film Festival Wiz-Art in association with the London Short Film Festival at which the film originally screened back in January of last year. I'm humbled to say it will be screening in a special retrospective of the best British shorts of the past three years to screen at LSFF. The even takes place on August 10th at 4pm and you can watch the programme for updates here.

Lucky 14

Klementhro's adventures continue with two more upcoming festivals I can cheerily reveal. Following last month's Hungarian screening at Busho, in roughly another month's time the film will return to Budapest as part of the 14th Anilogue International Animated Film Festival's competition programme. The programme specifics have not yet been announced but the festival runs from November 23rd to the 27th with event highlights including screenings of Michaël Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle and Claude Barras's My Life as a Courgette.

The first (possibly only) screening of 2017 will be a little closer to home, as part of the 14th London Short Film Festival. Out of the 80+ public outings our ginger rafting enthusiast has seen, UK festival screenings have been something of a rarity, so it's very nice that, whether or not this proves to be the end of his journey, Klementhro will eventually wash back up on British soil. Small victories and such. No programme specifics for this festival either right now, but I'll be sure to keep you all up to speed on both fronts.