OK, so back to the animation night. First, props to local animator Joey Adrian MacNeil who literally makes the street come alive with his breakdancing graffiti, B-Boy Bomb Breaking, and Posters, as community and music posters battle for position on the pole. As usual, the NFB animations stood out. Sleeping Betty is a wonderful piece about a sleeping princess who lives in a Montreal brownstone as numerous cartoon and characters, drawn in various classic illustration styles, anxiously look on. So they ring a prince who happens to be Prince Charles–oh yeah–drawn like a political cartoon, to kiss her.
At first look Madame Tutli-Putli appears to be a cute stop-motion animated Amelie-type character until you realize that this film is dark, dark, dark and that the puppets all have mottled skin, like worn wool. The animators Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski built these aluminum wire skeletons by hand. They have that authentic painstakingly handcrafted quality, like Graeme Patterson’s Woodrow. Even the clothing is authentic–Madame’s clothing was created from flea market scraps and the leather coats worn by the train thieves (a frightening scene), were buried in mud for two weeks to make them look old. Watch the trailer here:
The film that I’m still thinking about was one of the more simple of the night–lesson number two. Simplicity, humour and emotional depth all live together in Don Hertzfeldt‘s everything will be ok. The main character Bill may be a stick man, but he can still suffer from severe depression and have a crappy life. I have never felt so emotionally involved with a drawing before. No wonder Hertzfeldt won a Sundance top honours for this one:
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2007.