Bristish Animation Classics 1

British Animation Classics 1

Available from British Animation Awards

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M Pascal

Sketchy, monochromatic, very flat, deliberately jerky animation. An older gentleman, a cobbler, presumably, pulls a crucifix off a church wall. As he cares for it during the gathering storm the crucifix comes to life. They drink wine and watch hippie freaks jam and dance. Generations mingle in a groovy love space jam with flute and guitar. Crucifix puts guy back to sleep on bench and leaves. Custodial types enter the frame, move the bench over a little (with M. Pascal still on it (sleeping? dead?)). They plant a tree where the crucifix was, transmogrify into angels and fly away. Pascal wakes and admires the blossoming tree.

Alison de Vere

Strange standing-horsey beings with Mohawks live on a floating island in the sky. They speak a somewhat annoying made-up language and hunt the great Skywhale - more like a giant ray that they shoot with harpoons from sky boats with great difficulty. Boats that are like pedal-powered Viking ships floating on pumpkins. Old horsies turn into white zombies with black eyes, floating towards the center of the island in a blind daze. When zombies reach the center, they fall into the sacred hole and out the bottom having been turned into...Skywhales. The circle of life and all that. Classic cartoony animation (black edges, solid colors). Very pastel.

Skywhales

Derek Hayes + Phil Austin

Most excellent surreal mood piece using different styles of stop motion. Concerns a spinning planet made entirely of doors which open and close randomly, things popping out, odd things swirling through the rooms - sort of smudgy Magritte. Animation style change to b+w real world stop motion with keys and other objects (including photos of a couple) crawling across the landscape and breaking through doors. Narration throughout from a real colloquial youse guys kind of narrator telling a story about a bickering couple looking for keys to all these doors. They find a special key marked "this is the one" and argue about whether to try to find the door it fits. They agree not to, but he steals the key and spins into the ground. Back out through the doory planet (which now has a huge hole in it, like the back of its head was shot off) to reveal the narrator and friend as spinning skulls in space. Weird and wonderful.

Door

David Anderson

Hill Farm

Colored pencil, very flat, very blocky - like squared off Botero meets Mark Bayer. Pastoral, plotless farm scenes. Well runs dry. Watching for rain. Tourists visit. Bear attacks. Whatever.

Mark Baker

Juke Box

Animated xerox/pop-art hybrid. Quite appealing if nonsensical. Guy goes past dog into house for lunch, hears haunting synthesizer sequence tune, head explodes. Features "Move on Up" and FSOL We Have Explosive cover image. Short and sweet and very new wavey.

Run Wracke

Second Class Mail

Extremely sparse ink and colored pencil Canadian-style animation. No words. No mouths. Old lady gets blow up old man doll. Pops it. Bummer.

Alison Snowden

The Big Story

B+W film noir claymation featuring a young newspaper reporter badgering the editor for a chance at a big story. They threaten and spar in a manly way. Second reporter walks in. All characters are caricatures of Kirk Douglas (with ridiculously distended chin) at different points in his life/career. Voices by Frank Gorshen. Features "humorous" tagline, "you guys are all the same". Made by Spitting Image alumni.

David Stoten + Tim Watts

The Mill

Somewhat interesting technique - like sand animation. Sandimation. Dissonant string music accompanies a dark (very dark, almost all black) allegory/fairy tale/myth thing involving a little girl, an empty and foreboding factory, and lots of bees and their shrouded beekeeper. Lot of vaginas, too. Freeman also did Jumping Joan, on British Animation Awards 1.

Petra Freeman

Wondrous and beautiful. Most of the story is told through stop animation puppets on a stage telling a story through Kabuki-style theatre. What's curious is that all the action takes place on a stage with revolving concentric circles built in and the scenery and costume changes - which are many and varied - all employ simple, stylized sets and folding screens. The whole thing is built as though it could really be performed live this way, although the timing and lining up of elements would be virtually impossible to pull off. Includes puppets of characters performing the puppetry of the main characters. The story "ends" happily, but then the action switches to "actual" (as opposed to stage) claymation with what were the actors and are now the characters running away from a vengeful war lord. Lord kills man, woman defeats lord, finds man dead, then kills herself. New "real" action revealed as stage set again, which is revealed as sketches in an animator's notebook, then film runs out with leader flashes. All very layered and po-mo, but beautifully conceived and executed.

Screenplay

Barry Purves

Saint Inspector

Claymation. Freaky. Big naked comatose fly-eating fat man sitting on a platform high above the clouds gets visited by a mechanized inspector, who pokes and prods him, taking samples and fondling his Johnson. Inspector opens head and looks inside to see fast montage of guy's life. Nails his head back closed (crown of thorns) and stamps him "Approved".

Mike Booth

Girl's Night Out

Colored pencil and classic line animation about a woman who works in a cupcake factory going out for a birthday bash at a Chippendale's place (The Bull). Big stud muffin in a leopard-skin g-string starts shaking it for her (Beryl the Welsh housewife, apparently) until she nicks his knickers. Antics ensue. Features full frontal male nudity (I'm shocked, simply shocked).

Joanna Quinn

Feet of Song

Jazzy, abstract ode to dance. Extremely flat, very designy - almost cubist, but with no details. African music with stylized and colorful figures (human, but very abstracted - almost like African masks) dancing in rhythm. Quite pleasant...if you like that sort of thing...and I do). Also did Triangle on British Animation Awards 1.

Erica Russell

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