Cartoons Are Fun

Best souvenir ever...

My massive Encounters-athon has just come to a close and I'm shakily writing this in the interim between the final screening and a personal trainer session that's sure to finish me off. The festival's been great, if for no other reason that I drank until my eyes melted and got to meet some much-admired filmmaker types. Knock wood I didn't manage to completely alienate the greater percentage of them. "Ground Running"'s Saturday screening played to a slightly smaller crowd but the overall response to it seemed even better than on Thursday. Shame on all of you for laughing at that little naked baby's pain.
My own self-celebration aside, there were loads of amazing and inspiring shorts including some previous favourites "Damned", "The External World", "Bertie Crisp", "A Morning Stroll", "Greetings" and "The Eagleman Stag" along with a few seen for the first time:









All in all it was a great week and I'm especially grateful to Pete, Justine, Jo, Matt, Hans, Mel, Chris and Rachel for their support. Also I want to express my appreciation for the volunteers for all their help, including the frumpy one (who couldn't have been in a shittier mood if her knickers were lined with fibreglass) for not spitting directly in my face.
Well, it took three films and ninety festivals but I finally have this one crossed off the list. I finally feel at home in Bristol now.

Timing

I now have some specifics regarding a couple of previously mentioned screenings for "The Naughty List". It will be shown on Saturday 23rd at the Dawson City Film Festival's 'Beyond Aurora' section which begins 11:30pm. Also included in that selection is David O'Reilly's short "The External World" which is a pretty spectacular piece of work, so I'm very happy that my li'l toon is in good company.A couple months down the line it will close the 4pm short film screening at the Detmold Short Film Festival on June 9th.Also, just today I learned of its inclusion in Florida's Citrus Cel Animation Festival on April 10th...which was five days ago. Ah well, still nice that it's getting out there. Looked like a grand event overall, some really nice shorts included and it opened with Bill Plympton's "Idiots & Angels". I may have mentioned I'm a fan of his.
Speaking of which, I've spent the last few days inhaling his new autobiography "Independently Animated". I want to give it a proper review sometime soon but in short I'll say it's an essential read to any auteur animators out there, obviously for general fans of his as well. What I especially liked about it was learning about stuff he'd done I hadn't known about, such as this lovely piece on the cultural 'value' of abstract animation:
Well, much like Richard Gere in that army flick, 'I got nothin' else...'
Laters.