Animation
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Watch: Martha Colburn’s Donald Trump Animation, Drumpf and Bass
In this very short video, experimental filmmaker Martha Colburn processes the madness of our current presidential election by vivisecting the applause lines of the current Republican frontrunner and setting them to a skeezy electro beat. Oh, and there are toads — “probably from the Middle East!”
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 4, 2016 -
Anomalisa, Stop-Motion Animation and How 3D Printers are Changing Filmmaking
Remember stop-motion, that venerable technique of animated films ranging from old-time children’s classics by Rankin/Bass to sword-and-sandals epics by Ray Harryhausen? Given the success of Pixar’s movies, Minions and other computer-animated features, you might have thought that 2D, hand-drawn, and traditional stop-motion has been relegated to the dust bin of history. Well, if you are a fan of these styles, don’t lose hope just yet. Opening just before the New Year was Charlie Kaufman’s much-anticipated directorial follow up to 2008’s Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa. Directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, it’s being touted for its unique amalgam of animation processes […]
by Christianne Hedtke on Jan 11, 2016 -
Short Film Premiere: Leah Shore’s Transgressive Cookie-Themed Animated Holiday Film
Who doesn’t love cookies? And who hasn’t eaten too many in one sitting — perhaps even recently? Filmmaker Leah Shore, who landed on our 25 New Faces list in 2013, set out to make a confectionary-themed holiday card when scatological impulses got in the way. Her typically outrageous and beautifully animated 40-second animation, she says, “morphed into a tiny film, a gross pooptastic one.” (Indeed, Shore’s animation features the most novel appearance of a Christmas tree I think I’ve ever seen.) So perhaps be careful who you send this to, and if you have a sensitive stomach, watch before eating, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 8, 2015 -
This Animated Documentary Won the IDA Award for Best Short
Last Day of Freedom is a hand-drawn animated documentary which chronicles Bill Babbitt’s relationship with his mentally ill brother, Manny, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD who was sentenced to the death penalty after murdering a woman. Using a confessional format to tell a compelling story encompassing the treatment of veterans, PTSD, mental illness, the criminal justice system, racism and family, the film won the Best Short Award at at the International Documentary Association’s IDA Awards Saturday night. Directed by Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, Last Day of Freedom has taken top prizes at a number of festivals, including the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, where it won the Jury […]
by Paula Bernstein on Dec 8, 2015 -
Watch: Leah Shore’s Mindbending Charles Manson Animation, Old Man
Leah Shore made our “25 New Faces” list in 2013 on the basis of her totally trippy animated short, Old Man, which traverses the entirety of 20th century history, from Hitler to Kennedy, the bomb to Michael Jackson, in a rapid-fire, image-morphing five minutes that’s voiced by imprisoned cult leader Charles Manson. The recordings came from a series of tapes Shore obtained by Marlin Marynick, a psychiatric nurse. Explains Sarah Salovaara in her Filmmaker profile on Shore: Marynick forked over approximately 10 hours of audio recordings, which resulted in Shore “sitting in a dark room for two months and going […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 28, 2015 -
“… You Just Have to Remind Yourself, ‘I Can Do Anything'”: Kirsten Lepore Talks Animation on She Does Podcast
Animator Kirsten Lepore is the writer and director of an upcoming episode of Cartoon Network’s popular show Adventure Time. Until now, a majority of her career has been spent in her garage, which is actually her workshop, carefully moving tiny, handmade characters in the worlds she’s built for them. The films she made at Maryland Institute College of Art and CalArts, Sweet Dreams and Bottle, won countless awards and screened at SXSW, Slamdance, the Vimeo Awards, the Annie Awards, among others. She’s made work for big names like Google, MTV, Whole Foods, Nestlé and Nickelodeon, upholding her own raw but […]
by Elaine Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg on Aug 12, 2015 -
Biggest Challenge, Best Lesson: I Believe in Unicorns Director Leah Meyerhoff
Filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff is perhaps as well known for her film collective, Film Fatales, as for her first feature film, I Believe in Unicorns, which premiered at Sundance in 2014. Filmmaker did an extensive profile of the Film Fatales last year, and as gender parity in the film industry moves to the forefront of industry news, the Fatales has seen a dramatic increase in its members and activities that has kept Meyerhoff busy. Meanwhile, she prepares for the debut of Unicorns at the IFC Center on May 29th. The film will screen theatrically in New York, Los Angeles and San […]
by Tina Poppy on May 27, 2015 -
Martell Harding on His Award-Winning Scarface Redux Entry
Winning the prize for the best entry in the Borscht Film Festival’s Scarface Redux contest was Florida International University student Martell Harding, whose “Shootout” is 11 intense seconds of action-figure mayhem. Borscht’s crowdsourced remake of Brian DePalma’s modern neo-classic, Scarface Redux consists of, in the vein of Star Wars Uncut, homemade clips reinterpreting the film in a variety of styles and genres. And while Borscht 9 is over, the project is continuing, with some clips yet to be covered. Meanwhile, though, the competition aspect of the project is over, with Harding’s the winning clip. The filmmaker, who is studying Communication […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2015 -
Short Film: I Love You So Much by Leah Shore
“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it).” Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse. The muck of romantic language — spoken, inscribed on the body and splattered, along with images, on the screen — is the subject of Leah Shore’s latest short film, I Love You So Much. Shore made our 25 New Faces list back in ’13, and I Love […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 19, 2014 -
“I See It More as a Visual Poem”: Animator Glen Keane on the Interactive Film Duet
Glen Keane made me want to make movies. As a head animator at Disney from the 1970s until just a few years ago, when he left to create his own company, Keane created iconic characters like Ariel, Aladdin, and Tarzan, plus gorgeously drawn animals like the bear in The Fox and the Hound and the eagle Marahute in The Rescuers Down Under. But what held me spellbound was the moment when the Beast — his character — and James Baxter’s Belle walked into the computer-animated ballroom during the title song of Beauty and the Beast: I’d never seen anything like that before, and I […]
by Randy Astle on Dec 8, 2014
