Eventful times ahead

Some stuff's a-happenin' in the near (and nearer) future you might want to check out if you happen to be nearby. First off a late (last?) hurrah for my short film Speed as it joins the wonderful German touring programme Shorts Attack following its inclusion in the Interfilm Berlin festival back in 2020. Starting today it'll be amongst the lineup of the October selection Wo die Liebe hinfällt (Where Love Falls) alongside some of my favourite recent animations Just A Guy (Shoko Hara), Cipka (Renata Gasiorowska), Dans La Nature (Marcel Barelli) and Mmm...Cat (Yongxin Wang) as well as some live action shorts that look like fun. Check out the full list of dates and venues over on their website if it sounds like your cup of Schwarztee.

In a few weeks the Fredrikstad Animation Festival will kick off in Norway. Having weighed in on the preselection for their national competition programme back in July I'll be back over there to host their Meet The Filmmakers: Short Film Competition Q&A session on Friday October 21st at 8:30pm. As well as the various shorts programmes some event highlights to look out for include masterclasses with Mark Burton, Marie-Laure Guisset and Peter de Sève plus a screening of the wonderful Signe Baumane's My Love Affair With Marriage. You can check out the full schedule here.

Next month the Manchester Animation Festival will be back at HOME for a full physical edition after being mainly online for the last couple years. I'll be there for a nice chunk of it to muck in with several of the events - the Skwigly Screening will return for the first time since COVID on November 14th at 2pm and there'll be a special live edition of mine and Laura-Beth's podcast Intimate Animation on the 16th at 3:45pm. Later that day at 8pm our traditionally infuriating Skwigly Quiz will give festivalgoers a chance to viciously compete with one another before scratching and clawing their way to the prize table. There'll also be a screening of the Linoleum programme Sensitive Content followed by my recorded Q&A with the participants at 6pm on the 14th and Laura-Beth will be part of the panel Animated Answers: 3D Printing at 4pm on the 15th. As always there's a ton of other great stuff that'd be too long to list here so go ahead and check out the programme and grab yourself a pass.

Decluttering

Here's the last batch of dates for Interfilm's Shorts Attack Travel Stories programme (featuring Klementhro) that has been touring Germany throughout July. You can catch the film and its similarly nomadic companions at the following cities/venues:

• July 25th, 9pm - Kinobar Prager Frühling, Leipzig
• July 26th, 8:30pm - Cinema & Kurbelkiste, Münster
• July 27th, 6pm/8pm - Zoom Kino, Brühl
• July 27th, 8pm - Programmkino Ost, Dresden
• July 28th, 8pm - Filmraum, Hamburg

Thanks so much again to the Shorts Attack team for including the film and to everyone who got in touch with nice things to say about it. Klementhro's journey is far from over, however, so keep checking back for more updates as to just where he'll wind up next.

Last week I put up a video on my Facebook page offering up some free and cheap paraphernalia leftover from the days of promoting House Guest, namely the Official Pirate Version and the convention-exclusive graphic novel/DVD bundle. While the free DVDs went fairly quickly there are still a few book/DVDs available for a measly £5 that I'm happy to send over. It's a nice li'l book that I'm still quite proud of, and while these copies have been a little 'handled' by conventioneers it's a lot cheaper than you'd get them for new. If it's not of interest then at the very least you can enjoy the pretty horsies:

International Waters

My plucky goofabout of a film Klementhro continues its tour of Germany as July toddles along. Shorts Attack is taking its Travel Stories programme to the following venues over the next couple of weeks:
July 13th, 9pm - Lichtwerk Kino, Bielefeld
July 14th, 9pm - Babylon Kino, Fürth
July 15th, 9pm - Casablanca, Nürnberg
July 16th, 8pm - Filmraum, Hamburg
July 18th-20th - Arsenal Kino, Tübingen
July 19th-20th, 7:30pm - Haus Rode, Dortmund
July 20th, 9pm - Puschkino, Halle
Hope some of y'all in them Germanic regions can make it to a screening!

Several thousand miles west (or a lot further east if you chose to go the other way) in the wonderful city of Montreal, Klementhro will make its Canadian debut as part of the Animaze Montreal International Animation Festival. Très bon! The city being my sometime-stomping grounds, I'm really happy and grateful to finally have something of mine play over there - at the Museum of Fine Art, no less! That's right, Klementhro is officially 'fine art', there's no going back now. The festival runs from August 18th-21st, will post the usual update when I have an idea of when exactly the screening will happen, in the meantime check out the full selection here.

Seems like a nice place to spend some time over the summer...

Next Leg

Gute Nachrichten! My latest film Klementhro will be paddling its way across Germany throughout July as part of the touring programme Shorts Attack, put together by the fine folks at Interfilm. It will play alongside other films linked by the theme 'Travel Stories' by such excellent directors as Fluorescent Hill, Mark Lomond, Zsuzsanna Kreif, Borbála Zétényi and Jossie Malis among others. Things kick off this Saturday (July 2nd) 9pm at the UT Connewitz venue in Leipzig, followed by three simultaneous screenings on Wednesday July 6th at the Kinobar Prager Frühling (8:30pm, again in Leipzig), Berlin's Acud Kino (9pm) and the Medienhaus in Hannover (9pm).
Later in the week the programme will play in Hamburg at Filmraum (Saturday July 9th, 8pm) and the following night in München at the Werkstattkino. Check back here for more dates/venues later in the month!

I'm particularly pleased that the film is continuing what's been a long-running and very harmonious relationship between my work and European territories, especially given the recent outcome of the EU referendum that's left a lot of us shaken. In the latest episode of the Skwigly Animation Podcast myself and Steve attempt to make some sense of it all and talk through the potential ramifications Brexit may have on the animation industry should it go forward. If nothing else this is one of the more cathartic episodes we've ever put out. In a sunnier second half we also welcome the talents behind the latest Disney/Pixar box-office smash Finding Dory as well as its accompanying short film Piper, both of which we were able to catch at this year's Annecy festival. Stream below or direct download (of course you can always subscribe and never miss an episode).

Summer Break

It's been a long journey for our simple lad Klementhro, but the last stops of Kurzfilmnacht Schweiz, the first leg of the Short Film Nights tour focusing on Swiss-German speaking cities, will be this Friday (27th) and Saturday (28th) in both Uster and St. Gallen. For both nights the Uster programme will start at 8:30 at the Kino Qtopia while things kick off a little earlier (8pm) in St. Gallen at the Kinok Lokremise. Many thanks to the folks at Short Film Nights and I'm looking forward to the second leg of the tour later on in the year!

In the meantime Klementhro will be laying down his paddle for June (I'd had my fingers crossed the film would be picked to screen at Bill Plympton and Nancy Phelps's wonderful Annecy + party - which included The Naughty List a few years back - but alas it looks like the event is taking a hiatus this year) though it will be back in Germany for Shorts Attack, a series of themed screenings from Interfilm Berlin, in July! Exact time(s)/date(s) to follow.
I'm also happy to report that the recent burst of activity and wonderful response the film received has broken a dam, so to speak, and I've been filled with a renewed energy to make more films. While I'm not quite ready to start uttering the B-word again, I have scripts for several short'n'bizarre - as well as one not-so-short-but-especially-bizarre - film ideas that I'm itching to get started on, the first of which (working title: Sunscapades) I've already put a rough animatic together for and even done some early assets/animation tests. I'll leave you with one of the latter to chew on: