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Cohen’s Cartoon Corner by Karl Cohen
SF State's stellar new screening room will host the upcoming animation show. photo: courtesy SF State
THE BAY AREA CAN LOOK FORWARD
to several animation events happening in April that are open to the public.
SF State’s Careers in Animation Panel
On Sunday, April 12 at 1:30 PM at SF State’s Coppola Theatre (Fine Arts building, room 101) the annual Careers in Animation panel will discuss many things including the current trends in the business. A free event, it is being presented by ASIFA-SF, the Bay Area’s chapter of the international animation association and the students’ Animation Society.
The panel will include five or six people. One of the four whom we know will be there is Scott Kravitz, who recently worked in Vancouver as the Animation Supervisor on the films “Elysium“ and “Chappie“. Kravitz has moved back to San Francisco and is presently animating a film for Google that can be used on Google’s Android and on other devices. He expects to do a lot of work locally using new technology, in the future.
Joining him on the panel will be Tom Knott, the former director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival and Los Angeles International Animation Celebration. He has recruited artists for such films as “The Iron Giant, Robots“,“Coraline“ and “The Little Prince“. Tom has written for various publications and has lectured on animation history and production. He is currently producing a short film in San Francisco.
The third member of the panel is Charlie Canfield, a long time resident of San Francisco. Charlie is a 4-time Emmy award-winning animator, designer, and director who has created sequences for film, documentaries and ads for over 25 years, with an emphasis on digitally hand-drawn animation. His work ranges from drawn cartoons to computer graphics, special effects, and motion control camera shooting for employers such as Colossal Pictures, Wild Brain Inc, Industrial Light and Magic, Digital Kitchen, Mondo Media, MTV, Nickelodeon, Alpha Cine, and many independent filmmakers.
Canfield’s work has been shown at international film and animation festivals including Ottawa, Zagreb, London, Melbourne, New Zealand, San Francisco, Sundance, Anima Mundi, The world Animation Celebration, and by organizations such as The Northern CA Emmy’s, The Addy’s and Ad Age.
The forth panel member is John Hays who has a unique global perspective on the industry. After post-graduate studies at CalArts, he freelanced between Mill Valley Animation, ILM, Lucasfilm, and the legendary (Colossal) Pictures. He became Colossal’s first staff animator, rose quickly to Director and then was able to build on his overseas experience that brought in talent, resources, and projects from around the world.
In 1994 John co-founded WildBrain, Inc. where he served as Creative President, Director, and Head of Development. The company grew to be the biggest animation studio in San Francisco. John left WildBrain in 2009 to direct the animation on the indie feature, “Howl”, which opened the 2010 Sundance Film festival.
Today his Dogpatch based production studio Super Stealth Startup is in production on the 4th in a series of Nestle’s commercials campaigns for McCann/Erickson, Paris, France. The production is being done at The Monk Studios, Bangkok, Thailand.
Bill Plympton’s Cheatin’
On Friday, April 17: Bill Plympton’s “Cheatin’“ opens at the Roxie in San Francisco and at the Elmwood In Berkeley. I’ve seen his latest work and I should share with you a warning. One person told me, “Everyone who believes in family values should boycott this depraved feature!”
Bill has created a finely animated noir feature that shows off his new rich style of hand drawn animation, but if you believe the rumors circulating among conservative Christians, avoid this film as it is sure to be a hit among thrill seekers looking for kinky sex and violence.
The not-so-nice married couple in this film spends most of their time in bed having extra-marital sex with more partners than your favorite ice cream store has varieties of flavors. Of course there is a surprise twist or two to Bill’s twisted plot. It has won a special jury prize at Annecy 2014 and honors at other film celebrations. http://cheatinmovie.com/
A surrealist display in the window of ATA, a fixture in the Mission providing excellent alt-media including lots of video and film. photo: courtesy ATA
ATA’s Other Cinema
On Sat. April 18, 8:30 PM, An Evening Of Experimental Classics And New Works at ATA’s Other Cinema in San Francisco. ATA is located at 992 Valencia right in the heart of a really hot, lively, up and coming business district. ATA has been around for decades so the admission is still only $7!
ATA’s impresario Craig Baldwin is presenting new works by well established animators Martha Colburn and Kelly Sears plus classics by Len Lye, Oskar Fischinger, Hy Hirsch, Mary Ellen Bute and Lillian Schwartz. He also is presenting works in what he calls “stereo-scopophilia” and “ChromaDepth 3-D” (I have no idea what they are, nor do I know what you will see if you “come early for the live-projected psychedelia of Canadian AV avatars Fleshtone Hacking,” see their site.
Alt Film in Berkeley
Finally on Saturday, April 25, at 8:30 PM, Jeffrey Skoller, a U. C. Berkeley professor, will present his Social (Sur) Realism program. It is a lecture full of film clips that illustrate the new “liberated” genre of the animated documentary. The clips come from works by Jacqueline Goss, Ken Jacobs, Kota Ezawa, Chris Marker and others. Plus there will be an “opening half-hour complement of related media-artworks, boasting Chris Marker’s rarely screened Three Cheers for the Whale,” see their site.
Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Mar 20, 2015 - 05:28 AM