Annecy 2020: Five “Commissioned Films” Highlights
The Commissioned Films category of any festival is a great way to see a wide range of visual styles, animation techniques, and subjects; music videos, festival idents, commercials, charity films – basically any professionally commissioned animated film.
As the Annecy festival moved online this year, we were pleased to see their usual number of 35 films were again selected for competition. Although not included in this highlights piece, the Cristal for Commissioned Film went to Lucky Chops “Traveler”, while the Jury award was awarded to Greenpeace “Turtle Journey”. We have picked out five highlights from this year’s selection for you to enjoy and watch below…
The Mystical Journey of Jimmy Page’s ’59 Telecaster
Directed by: Smith & Foulkes
Production: Nexus
As part of Led Zeppelin’s 50th anniversary celebrations, Smith & Foulkes teamed up with Fender to create this video that takes viewers on a psychedelic tour through music history. The film is creatively expanded around Jimmy’s narrative of the late 1960s, and his relationship with the iconic mirror telecaster. Smith & Foulkes said
It goes without saying that everybody loves a dragon. And we made full use out of that! But it was much trickier to visually illustrate the mirror guitar which was more about the optical sensation of prismatic light patterns. So we hit upon this idea of how images are bent and twisted in a Hall of Mirrors, which seemed to fit the idea of new sounds being distorted as Jimmy experimented with the Telecaster.
Beatbox Anima Mundi
Directed by: Janet Perlman
Production: Hulascope Studio
A simple but very effective idea for the 2019 trailer for the Anima Mundi Animation Festival; where sound and visuals work equally to create a memorable peice. Following on from the well publicised financial difficulties that the festival reported in 2019, let’s hope this isn’t the last trailer we see from the Brazilian festival…
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society “Grace”
Directed by: Natalie Labarre
Production: Hornet
This 45-second spot was commissioned by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), detailing how they can help people come to terms with the news of a cancer diagnosis. In director Natalie Labarre’s own words, the film is intended to be “a visual representation of what it’s like to have your life fall apart.” So, she made it literally fall apart with an unraveling of structures around the characters, a blurry focus, and a swirl of levitating objects. Ultimately, the film is a heartfelt, soothing, beautifully-illustrated 2D animation with a heavy, yet hopeful, tone.
Wantaways “The Turning Point”
Directed by: Steve Cutts
By now, you’re probably aware of the films of Steve Cutts, they come with that Max Fleischer-inspired animation style, and often satirise the excesses of modern society. (If you haven’t seen Are You Lost In The World Like Me? or Happiness, check them out.) This time around, Cutts turns to the subject of climate change, the destruction of the environment, and species extinction; from an alternative perspective.
Past “Tíseň”
Directed by: Nora Štrbová, Alžběta Suchanová
Production: Nadne Production
This black and white, hand drawn 2D animated music video for Czech band P/\ST attemps to show the ‘constantly changing shape of anxiety’ – growing, dripping, creeping, gushing from the walls, coming out of the forests and rivers – constantly escaping.