London International Animation Festival (LIAF 2013)
Skwigly
“That LIAF can move so seamlessly from ground-breaking, uncompromising CGI to 9.5mm home-entertainment Felix the Cat films is testament to its strength as a festival” – Eleanor McKeown – Electric Sheep Magazine.
The London International Animation Festival (LIAF) returns for our 10th anniversary with an exciting, intriguing, inspiring, sometimes controversial, thoroughly comprehensive collection of animation from 25 October to 3 November. This is the UK’s largest festival of its kind in the UK, screening the best new animation from every corner of the world to London audiences with 300+ films, most of them British premieres, represented in a series of amazing programmes and satellite events.
With films from 30 countries LIAF will proudly showcase the whole spectrum of creative animation, showing that animation is so much more than slick blockbusters and special effects. LIAF 2013 is sure to challenge, engage and inspire its audience through a comprehensive presentation of outstanding animated short and feature-length films.
As well as 8 competitive programmes featuring the best international animated short films from all over the world, there are many especially curated sessions such as 3 very special sessions looking back at some of the funniest, darkest and fantastical films that have screened over LIAF’s lifetime in the 10 best comedy, horror and sci-fi programmes, 3D stereoscopic animation from the National Film Board of Canada, the remarkable work of Platige Image studio in Poland and Sacrebleu Productions in France, 4 astonishing animated feature films and the return of perennial favourites – animated documentaries, the British Showcase and 2 childrens sessions.
Add in lots of talks, guests, competitions, special presentations and a 2-day industry event and for 10 days LIAF will be the centre of the international animation universe. The whole week wraps up with the Best of the Festival on Sunday night 3 November with a collection of films chosen by our panel of judges and audience votes.
The full programme is available online at www.liaf.org.uk .
Dates: 25 October – 3 November
Venues: The Barbican, the Horse Hospital, Rio Cinema.
Tickets available from the Barbican box-office and the LIAF website .
THE LIAF GALA OPENING 6-30pm FRIDAY 25 OCTOBER
Ladies & gentlemen… Help us celebrate LIAF’s 10th birthday in style with a preview screening of a great collection of films from right across the LIAF 2013 line-up. New films in competition, classics from the special programmes, a first chance to meet the guests, and a glimpse at the new British crop.
This is the essential LIAF showbag and the numbers are strictly limited.
Plus the UK premiere of the feature film ‘Persistence of Vision’ (USA) – directed by Kevin Schreck (USA), 2012.
The untold story of the greatest animated film NEVER made. Striving to make the greatest animated film of all time, visionary animator Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) toiled for more than a quarter of a century on his masterpiece – only to have it torn from his hands. Schreck has woven together mind blowing animation, rare archival footage and exclusive interviews with key animators and artists who worked with Williams on his ill-fated magnum opus.
After the screening there will be a live onstage discussion with Persistence of Vision Director Kevin Schreck.
OUR SPECIAL LIAF GUESTS:
A. Ola Watras (Poland) – from Platige Image studios
Poland’s Platige Image Film Studio is having a very major say in the shaping of 3D stereoscopic animation. In existence for a mere 15 years, Platige Image has produced a truly impressive collection of short films and commercials. One of its very first short films, The Cathedral, was nominated for an Academy Award and virtually every one of its shorts since then has gone on to win awards and near-universal acclaim.
This programme will be introduced by very special guest Ola Watras from Platige Image who will take part in a Q and A after the screening. Her perspective on where digital animation is headed will be fascinating.
B. Kevin Schreck – Director of Persistence of Vision (opening night feature)
Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kevin Schreck is a young documentary filmmaker currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Persistence of Vision is his first feature-length film, which has screened at more than 20 festivals worldwide winning universal acclaim.
C. Phil Mulloy (UK) – Director of The Pain and the Pity (screens at the Horse Hospital)
Multi-award winning animator Phil Mulloy has been described as the most entertaining and visceral filmmaker since Tex Avery. His provocative work stands as a model of satiric grotesque unparalleled in British animation. The antidote to all that is kitsch and sentimental, his direct, witty and acerbic fables, drawn in brush and ink, or crudely designed on the computer perceptively comment on human nature and challenge contemporary values.
D. Elizabeth Hobbs (UK) – running the Flipbook Challenge Workshop at the Barbican.
Elizabeth Hobbs is an independent animator working in East London under the name Spellbound Animations. Her short films have been screened widely internationally and won many awards. They include The Emperor (2001), The Witches (2002), The True Story of Sawney Beane (2005) and The Old, Old, Very Old Man (2007). Elizabeth also runs animation workshops in museums and galleries and lectures at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.
4 ANIMATED FEATURE FILMS SCREENING AT LIAF 2013:
A. Persistence of Vision (USA) – directed by Kevin Schreck (USA), 2012.
Screens at the Barbican.
Screening at the opening night gala. Please see description above.
B. The Pain and The Pity (UK) – directed by Phil Mulloy, (UK) ,2013 – UK premiere.
Screens at the Horse Hospital.
The third – and presumably final – instalment in the mercurial ‘Christies’ animated features by the equally mercurial bad boy of British animation, Phil Mulloy. Raw, roughly hewn images knitted together with a unique system of narrative structuring, bashed into existence using the tools and resources of our age and plastered onto the big screen with the customary ‘take it or leave it’ Mulloy energy. Phil Mulloy will be present to introduce his film and take part in a Q and A after the screening.
C. Consuming Spirits (USA) – directed by Chris Sullivan, 2012
Screens at the Horse Hospital.
Watching Consuming Spirits is like surrendering to hypnosis, or to a particularly haunting dream. The making-of story (14 years of painstaking self-funded production, animating frame by frame on 16mm) is impressive enough, and because he put in so many hours Chris Sullivan has built a small rust-belt town with such a level of detail that you feel you know the place inside out by the end. But what’s really striking about the film is the melancholy grandeur it creates from apparently small, dead-end lives, the past creeping in like a fog as the three protagonists confront their secrets.
“So if you have been marked by A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, and by the early novels of Stephen King, if you believe that at the end, Eraserhead is the most beautiful film by David Lynch, and finally if you are convinced that the bowels of industrial America are well worth the skins shining on both sides,
go see Consuming Spirits. “ Thomas Sotinel World, France
D. Tito on Ice (Sweden/Germany) – directed by Max Andersson, 2012. UK premiere.
Screens at the Horse Hospital.
To promote their book ‘Bosnian Flat Dog’, Swedish comics creators Max Andersson and Lars Sjunnesson tour the countries of former Yugoslavia with a mummified Marshal Tito in a refrigerator. Watching border controls turn into improvised snapshot sessions, admiring mutant iron-curtain Disney toys, buying souvenir grenade shell handicrafts and discovering sniper art in blown-out apartments, they find that truth may indeed be stranger than fiction.
A combination of stop-motion animation and documentary scenes, the film turns into a roller coaster ride through a parallel universe where all borders are disintegrating – at the same time tragic, poetic and hilariously funny.
8 OF THE VERY BEST INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION PROGRAMMES
The best of recently released short animated films from all over the world, all put together in 8 bite-sized programmes, carefully chosen from 2000+ entries. They come in from every corner of the world, they use every technique, they can be funny, dramatic, eye-popping, subdued, documentary or autobiographical. The one thing they have in common is that we think they’re the pick of the crop. There are also competition programmes focusing purely on abstract animation and longer shorts.
THE BRITISH SHOWCASE plus MEET THE FILMMAKERS
One of our most important and popular programmes. There aren’t many opportunities to see British animation on the big screen and each year LIAF probably shows more than any other event. This is an opportunity to see what British animators are doing, how they’re doing it and how the artform is travelling. Come and meet a colourful bunch of British characters – including a marmot, a vampire, the Grim Reaper, a stifled musician and Zinedine Zidane!
After the screening there is a chance to meet many of the animators, hear them talk about their films and ask them questions about their work.
10 COMEDY/10 HORROR/10 SCI-FI ANIMATED SHORTS
Wow – we made it to our 10th anniversary!! We’ve received more than 12,000 entries, screened more than 2,500 films, and had some of the most talented animators in the world come and hang out with us. These three special screenings review the very best comedy, horror and sci-fi films that have screened at LIAF over the years – each programme features 10 of our very best funny, dark and fantastical films. Sit back and enjoy the work of some of the most iconic filmmakers working in animation including Bill Plympton, Adam Elliot, Joanna Quinn, Don Hertzfeldt, Chris Shepherd and Shane Acker.
ANIMATED DOCUMENTARIES plus ONSTAGE Q AND A with the filmmakers.
Persuasive, illustrative and able to get over abstract details in attractive and compelling ways, animation is the perfect tool to document someone’s vision of the truth. These films – a selection of stylish and compelling short documentaries contain beautifully realised sequences and some of the most stunning animation in the festival. Topics covered in these films include a child’s perception of death, sleep paralysis and a bizarre look into the recent ramblings of incarcerated serial-killer Charles Manson’s mind.
NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA’S 3D STEREOSCOPIC FILMS
The National Film Board of Canada has one of the most sophisticated 3D stereoscopic labs in the world. The films that come out of this sublime creative engine-room showcase just what 3D stereoscopic animation is truly capable of. Curated by the NFB’s head of 3D Animation, Munro Ferguson, this programme is a stunning collection of films unleashed from all the restraints that smother most 3D stereoscopic animation that’s floating around out there. Get those glasses on!
STUDIO FOCUS – SACREBLEU PRODUCTIONS, PARIS, FRANCE.
Founded by Ron Dyens in 1999, the Paris production and distribution studio has produced more than 40 films that have nearly 1000 screenings at festivals all over the world. Their roster of animators contains some of the most stylish and sophisticated auteur animators in Europe who, under the supportive umbrella of Sacrebleu, have produced some of the most beautiful, compelling and sought-after animated shorts created in recent times. This programme gathers a superb collection of highlights from this quiet powerhouse of European animation. This is a programme that gently but persuasively showcases the extraordinary potential of animation when it is entrusted to some of the most gifted artists working in the field today.
CHILDRENS ANIMATION PROGRAMMES – 0-6 year olds/7-15 year-olds
Animation, like childhood, can be just full of wonder with the biggest pleasures being the simplest ones. These two programmes, carefully chosen for our littlest and most special audience, strips away all the soft-sell toy ads and the over-the-top blockbuster-style special effects and just delivers wonderful films full of simple joys.
BEST OF THE FEST
Judges votes, audience favourites and a few ‘over-looked’ classics we throw in for good measure. This is the last chance to see these films before the curtain comes down for another year. This snapshot of the world’s best animated films chosen from the 300 or so that have screened over the previous 10 days always sells out so be in early.
Also:
LIAF 2-DAY ANIMATION INDUSTRY EVENT
Creative Skillset have joined up with us to run our annual Animation Industry Event and we’ve got all manner of topics being covered, by special guests from a wide range of very different areas. Each of them are ready to impart their knowledge and answer questions in 4 carefully chosen panel sessions. For anyone working in the industry, thinking of working in the industry or just plain curious these 4 sessions are indispensable.
Topics covered include:
- Tax breaks and the new future of animation.
- Bit Players – is coding creative?
- How to Become a 10-year-old: living long and prospering in animation.
- The importance of Sound in Animation.
ANIMATION MASTERCLASS WITH OLA WATRAS (POLAND)
The LIAF masterclasses are unique in the world of animation. A fascinating and indispensable look at some of the processes involved in our special international guests award-winning productions, Ola Watras will talk about and deconstruct the astonishing body of work coming out of Platige Image studio in Poland, with the aim of inspiring future filmmakers to embrace their inner craziness.
FLIPBOOK COMPETITION
If you’ve not made a flipbook before, or if you’d like to find out a little more about this particular form of micro-animation, then pop along to our Flipbook Challenge Workshop. Flipbook expert Elizabeth Hobbs will share her expertise in the form of tips, tricks and demonstrations, then guide you as you embark upon creating your own. This workshop is 2 hours long and includes all materials.
CHILDRENS ANIMATION WORKSHOPS
Lead by BAFTA winning animator Kevin Griffiths, who will introduce the various stages of ‘cut-out’ animation and guide children step-by-step through the process of making their very own animated film. Children will learn how to use a camera, laptop and software to create their own Halloween-themed animations. They will then get the chance to bring their films to life by experimenting with sound to create eerie atmospheres, ‘bumps in the night’ and give a voice to their ghostly characters. For 10-14 year-olds.
Plus FREE drop-in animation workshop for 0-6 year-olds – Join us in the cinema foyer before the Amazing Animations screening on Saturday October 26 for a special chance to try out your hand at making a short animated sequence with BAFTA-award winning animator Kevin Griffiths.