A series of animated shorts illustrating young people’s perspectives of living as refugees and asylum seekers. Part of the BBC Two Learning Zone, this series won a Children’s BAFTA in 2012.
Produced by Mosaic Films in London, UK.
Director: Andy Glynne
Animation Directors: Salvador Maldonado, Karl Hammond, Tom Senior and Jonathan Topf
Released over a year ago this animated docmentary looks at the current UK trend for labia surgery, a procedure which trims and tidies a woman’s labia.
Directed and designed by animateddocumentary.com’s co founder Ellie Land.
“If they’re not doing time for this, then surely for something else.”
The new film from US director Sheila Sofian, follows inmates on life sentences in the US prison system. Sofian “conjures up an inferno of expressive animations painted on glass, abstract re-enactments, and surrealist details, which condenses into a passionate appeal to politicians to abolish prejudgements and racial discrimination.”
The films world premier will be at Dok Leipzig this November and has been nominated for the Animadoc Award.
We have featured Sheila’s work on the blog before, most notably her writing on animated documentary.
We wish Sheila the best of luck with her new film and also her nomination for the Animadoc award!
http://films2013.dok-leipzig.de/de/film.aspx?ID=6096&title=Truth+Has+Fallen
This looks like a fascinating event at DOK Leipzig this October!
If any of our readers are going, we would love to hear from you. Event details are below:
Dear documentary and animation film lovers and makers,
we ‘d like to invite you to another great DOK Industry event: Anima meets Doc: Expanded, Thursday, 31 October 2013, 14:00 – 17:30, Ringcafé Leipzig
Anima meets Doc: Expanded widens its scope, inviting documentary, animation, trans and cross media makers to join us for an afternoon round table session of new discoveries and connections. Bigger, bolder, broader and under the guidance of 13 exciting table hosts from across these industries, be inspired by peers and forge new links outside of traditional genres, at one of DOK Leipzig’s most dynamic networking events.
This isn’t a traditional pitching or networking event, we won’t present specific projects or plan meetings for you. Instead we want to help you create meaningful working relationships with a broad cross-section of professionals, share experiences with like-minded colleagues and be inspired by forward, sideways and innovative thinkers.
The goal is connectivity: let’s establish a new community of exciting non-fiction storytellers!
You are working in:
– animation
– documentary
– in the trans or cross media world
– somewhere in between
You are looking for:
– partners to realise your next project which might be an animated documentary, multiplatform or outside traditional genre definition
– to get involved as a partner or collaborate on multidisciplinary projects
– inspiration outside your own area of expertise
– to meet like-minded film professionals
Please register via this link http://animameetsdok.wufoo.com/forms/z7x4m1/ before October 15. This event will have limited capacity so registration is a must! Stay tuned for the list of exciting table hosts!
Any questions? Get in touch with Katrin Haucke!
Graham Chapman, in his own voice, leads the audience through his bookish youth at Eton, confused sexuality at Cambridge and the early days of success with Monty Python, but this is not a narrative of glory. The deceased narrator also provides a cutting analysis of alcoholism and the vacuous existence of fame.
The feature is divided into 17 scenes, animated by 14 different studios in the UK and abroad. This proves to be a huge challenge in terms of continuity. Often the feel is that of a stream of well-curated short films. Without the ever-present voice of Chapman himself cohesion could be lost entirely.
One way to look at this is as an anthology of contemporary British animation. In these terms there are many diamonds to be cut from the rough. Matt Layzell directs a sumptuous journey through space and celebrity. We encounter abstracted polygon caricatures of Graham’s peers as he drifts though a swirling cosmos in search of famous guests to attend his party.
The aesthetics of alcohol withdrawal are successfully encapsulated in the sweating glow of the oil on glass technique employed by Arthur Cox director George Sander-Jackson. The intricate free hand texture lends itself superbly as a luminous expression of suffering. The fiery sepia glow goes so far as to suggest a sort of hell on earth.
The glassy veneer of Los Angeles was captured in all its transparent glory by Matthias Heogg. Rendered digitally, the Beakus director made every component see-through to emphasize the falseness of Graham’s life at that point. This superb visual metaphor is both beautiful in its simplicity of concept as well as its formal execution.
Sadly one or two of the scenes were behind the quality of the others and stood out in contrast. Mr & Mrs Monkeys, a gathering of 3D primates each representative of a Python member, were not appealing. The look of the scene was visually underwhelming; textureless with a muddy colour palette, while the character design was at the level of the most basic of caricatures.
Such a plethora of styles has it’s pros and cons. A certain excitement is built up when waiting to discover the next scene regardless of the narrative arc. Some say a change is as good as a rest, however I must admit this may not be true for 17 changes. Being exposed to a new visual language every few minutes was at times draining, but more concerning it distracted on from the narrative and drew attention to the frame.
Nick Park of Aardman speaks of around 200 people working on any one of their features, but he emphasises the studio would always make the effort to create the illusion that this all came from one person’s mind. This cohesion is so clearly disrupted in A Liar’s Autobiography. The unique selling point of dividing labour between studios, despite all its richness, shouts of practical reasoning. Potentially it is more affordable to ask many animation houses to complete relatively short sequences in exchange for a modest fee and the chance to contribute to a feature film.
I must emphasise that despite a disordered formal composition the film is thoroughly enjoyable, visually fascinating and witty. The feature is propelled forward by the sheer quality of its source material. Graham Chapman lived life like a shambolic rock star while maintaining dignity, self-awareness and a self-deprecating tone which is unique to British comedy.
A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman is available on DVD and Blu-ray now. The trailer can be watched here:
Here is our first interview with a film maker in what we hope to be a regular feature on our blog.
Jeff Simpson, one of the three co-directors of A Liar’s Autobiography, talks about the experience of making the animated feature based on Graham Chapman’s life.
I asked Jeff to explain the genesis of the project. He sprang into a well rehearsed monologue, recounting professional encounters with the Pythons in which he had dropped in the idea of making a documentary about Graham Chapman, the only deceased member. With the help of David Sherlock, Graham’s long-term partner, Jeff tracked down the voice recordings Chapman did of his autobiography.
Jeff talked about his formal training as a BBC Arts documentary maker, so unsurprisingly his first instinct was to approach the great British Broadcasting Corporation for a talking heads documentary. To quote Jeff “In their wisdom they turned it down; they didn’t feel Graham Chapman was interesting enough”. He made it clear he was not bitter, the tone of light sarcasm bubbling underneath, and proceeded to spell out the surname of the BBC executive who rejected the project.
The other two co-directors, Bill Jones and Ben Timlett, seemed to come into play soon after this point. Similarly to Jeff, they had been working with the Pythons recently on a big budget documentary series for U.S. television. Bill (who is the son of Terry Jones) was crucial in gaining them access again to the other Pythons. However Jeff was repetitious in his emphasis that this was a Graham Chapman film, not a Monty Python feature.
Saying that, inspired by Terry Gilliam’s cut-out paper interludes, Bill & Ben had explored animation as a structural device in their documentaries, while Jeff had done the equivalent for his pitch to the BBC. Jeff described a eureka moment which happened after the three of them partnered up. This was where they realized the autobiography was more or less divided into a series of scenes with dialogue. “We realised we could take out Graham’s voice from the other characters and replace them with other members of Monty Python… so effectively you’ve got a new scene. As soon as you say we can get Terry Jones to play the mum, Michael Palin to play the dad then you’ve got it.” As the project developed into an animated feature, the other Pythons were keen to come on board as they all had great respect for Graham as a writer. Palin in particularly used a passage from A Liar’s Autobiography to describe their first visit to America in his one-man show.
In reference to working as one of three directors, Jeff explained, “When I signed up for this I thought it would be a disaster”. As it turns out now Jeff recommends it as a formula; “With two [directors] I can see it would be difficult. There’s no way of brokering a disagreement… It happened on Holy Grail, the plan was that Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones would co direct it but they ended up fighting. One Terry would shoot something in the morning and then the other Terry in the afternoon would re-shoot it differently… With three there’s always a majority vote.” Jeff used to tell his editors at the BBC “ I probably come up with ten new ideas every day, but only two of them are any good and your job is to tell me which two are the good ones.”
The animation was a technically daunting process. Not only had they recruited over a dozen different animation studios but also they took on stereoscopic cinema or 3D with none of the crew having much experience. Luckily for Jeff, Bill and Ben they had Justin Weyers, the animation producer. Jeff humbly proclaimed at the cast and crew screening “…people wonder what the directors actually do on a film. We tell Justin what we want and he makes it happen.” Justin was not only the go between, animation wrangler, director of animation and technical guy, he was also one of the animators, directing the Biggles scene in the fighter plane. Jeff explained it was the directors’ role to concentrate on script and story while also keeping the over view, making sure what was essentially a set of shorts works as a feature film.
Later he went into detail about the process of gaining funding. Crucially Ben Timlett managed to negotiate a final cut with Epix, a US broadcaster who footed half the bill. Initially another channel had rejected the script because it was a bit raunchy while Epix picked up the project for the reason the other studio discarded it.
When I asked how he saw this film fitting into the wider context of animated documentary Jeff retorts “We do see our film as something completely different. It’s interesting that you think of it as a documentary. Because we actually see it as fictionalised. It claims to be fictionalised. So how could it be a documentary? In fact it was put up for an award as a documentary and we asked for it to be withdrawn from the category as we didn’t want it to be seen [that way].”
“Ben calls it a new genre; a fabricated animated bio-pic. We always liked the idea that Graham is teasing you with what’s true and what’s not true. As it happens when you dig into it you find that a lot of it is true, apart form his abduction by space aliens.”
A Liar’s Autobiography, which is now available in store on Blue ray and DVD, will be reviewed in a forthcoming Animated Documentary post.
Due to be released in 2013, the film features 17 different animation styles, which perhaps we get a glimpse of here in this trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbW842eMNtI
This day long symposium was designed and delivered by Animation Therapy’s Helen Mason, at this years Encounters Short film and animation festival in September 2012.
‘Animation on prescription’ brought together health professionals, animators and artists at a day long symposium exploring the following themes: animation as a process in a therapy setting, therapeutic interventions as part of the design process and animated documentaries focussing on health issues.
The day started with a key note speech from co founder of Aardman animation’s David Sproxton, who outlined Aardmans historical relationship and commitment with issue based animation.
It’s difficult to say what the highlight of the day was because of the high quality of each speaker and their project presented. The three I have chosen provide a good insight to the day.
Cleo Ellis, an occupational therapist who uses animation practice in forensic psychiatry, talked about the Animation Therapy model and how the process of animation was instructional to improving the life skills and therefore life chances of her service users.
‘Tree Fu Tom’ an animated series on Cbeebies for young children, was presented by Sally Payne an Occupational therapist who worked closely with the animation director on this production. The goal of this series is to encourage children to live less sedentary life styles, through actively participating with the animated character. The audience help Tom create spells, which advance the story. What was fascinating about this project was how the therapeutic models of the Occupational therapist were embedded into the design of the animation, in particular the narrative and the character design.
Two animated documentaries were screened, ‘Centrefold’ by Ellie Land and’ Mother of many’ by Emma Lazenby, both of which have featured on animateddocumentary.com. It was a really pleasure to watch Mother of Many again, it’s one of those films that feels like an experience. Emma went through some of the research and production processes and played us a live recording of a woman giving birth –which she said she listened to everyday during the 9 month production period!
I attended the previous Animation Therapy symposium 2 years ago, which was just as stimulating and thought provoking as this one. I think this proves that we still have a lot more to talk about and discover about animation in a therapy/ health setting and I cant wait for the next instalment.
The UK’s Great North Run has just opened its Moving Image Comission for 2012: a £30 000 budget to make new work in response to the world’s largest half-marathon. More info here:
http://www.greatnorthrunculture.org/moving-image/apply
I just discovered in the archives a film from 2007 by director Suky Best which focuses on the stories and experiences of individual runners.
ANIMATEDDOCUMENTARY.COM 