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Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: Sept 2020 by Karl F. Cohen
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Poster for 'Animation Outlaws' by local filmmaker Kat Alioshin. image: K. Alioshin
SF Doc Fest
San Francisco’s Doc Fest 2020 will show “Animation Outlaws” online plus two other features that use some animation. The festival runs from Sept. 3 to Sept. 20 and details will be found here.
“Animation Outlaws”, by local filmmaker Kat Alioshin, uses lots of short interviews with animators to tell the story of the Spike and Mile animation festivals, which introduced thousands of people to the world of independent animation.
The interviews include the creative talents behind “Beavis and Butthead”, “Wallace and Gromit”, “Happy Tree Friends”, and dozens of other memorable films. Spike and Mike were two hippies in college who promoted rock shows until they discovered they could make a living by producing and promoting their one-of-a-kind animation programs.
There had been other animation festivals before they got their start, but they added the element of playful fun. They got their audiences to hit giant balls around the theatre and did silly things on the stage. One hit was "Scottie, the Wonderful, Shredding Dog". They also presented many animation stars as guests on stage, including voice actress June Foray and British animator Nick Park. Indeed, their festivals helped launched the careers of today’s animation legends.
“Animation Outlaws” (68 min) is a finely crafted documentary that shows wonderful moments of excellent films and a few clips from weird works. The DVD is $11.34 and the Blu-ray $13.29 from Amazon. For a TV news story about the feature, go here.
“A Place to Breathe” is by local filmmaker, as well as subject of the film, Michelle Steinberg, who is from Oakland. Said by colleagues of mine to be a powerful documentary, it explores the universality of trauma and resilience through the eyes of health care practitioners and patients from the immigrant and refugee community.
Combining cinema vérité portraits of different personal journeys and animation, “A Place to Breathe” (87 min) highlights the creative strategies by which immigrant communities in the U.S. survive and thrive.
“Roy's World: Barry Gifford's Chicago” by Rob Christopher concerns the Bay Area’s Barry Gifford, sometimes hailed as the “William Faulkner of the film noir, B-movie.” Gifford is also a writer of torrid paperbacks and a poet. Gifford has given the world more than forty works including the “Sailor and Lula” novels that inspired David Lynch’s “Wild At Heart”.
Indeed, director Rob Christopher brilliantly brings to life Gifford’s autobiographical collection, “The Roy Stories” (75 min). It captures his childhood during a now-vanished 1950s Chicago through a jazzy, impressionistic combination of beguiling archive footage, animation and spoken word, with voices by Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, and Lili Taylor.
General Information about DocFest: The 19th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest) will take place online via Eventive. Tickets are available at sfindie.com. Regular tickets are $10. The DocPass, good for all screenings and parties at the Film Festival, is $150. For more info, contact DocFest at 415-662-FEST or .
Actor Peter Coyote provides narration for 'Yellowstone 88: Song of Fire'. image: B. de Fries
Little Fluffy Clouds
Little Fluffy Clouds animation studio completes “Yellowstone 88: Song of Fire", a five-minute short about the fire that engulfed sections of the park in 1988. The picture is now locked.
Actor Peter Coyote reads the narrative poem that Betsy de Fries wrote. He recorded it remotely via Stephen Barncard's studio in Sebastopol. Stephen was a recording engineer for The Dead, CSN&Y, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell etc., back in the day. Little Fluffy Clouds is a local animation studio run by Betsy de Fries and Jerry van de Beek.
Yosemite Sam Jewish?
You may have seen Trump say “Yo Semite” on TV instead of the park’s real name. Although he obviously didn’t mean to address the Jewish community, this apparently has led to a discussion asking: Is Yosemite Sam Jewish?
Yosemite Sam was a big star for Looney Tunes in the '50s. image: Looney Tunes
Plympton Stars on Criterion
Bill Plympton has been called “The King of Indie Animation.” That tag is based on his long record of successes since "Your Face”, his first independent short was given an Oscar nomination in 1987. His wonderfully weird creations are unmistakable: the wriggly, hand-sketched style, his warped humor, and endlessly shape-shifting, transmogrifying images that are the hallmarks of his singularly bizarre and brilliant imagination.
He started his professional career as a newspaper and magazine cartoonist, but when he discover animation and there was audience for his twisted shorts, he was hooked on a new career. Since then he has created dozens of shorts and features and has gained a worldwide cult following.
A self-described “blend of Magritte and R. Crumb,” Plympton is a one-of-a-kind auteur of the absurd, an underground animation hero whose films hold a funhouse mirror up to the innate strangeness of everyday reality.
Animation acme Bill Plympton, now featured on Criterion, in a self-portrait from 2007. image: B. Plympton
Criterion plans to show his features “The Tune” (1992), “I Married a Strange Person!” (1997), “Mutant Aliens” (2001), “Hair High” (2004), “Idiots and Angels” (2008), “Cheatin’” (2013), “Revengeance” (2016). They also will show his shorts “Your Face” (1987), “One of Those Days” (1988), “25 Ways to Quit Smoking” (1989), “How to Kiss" (1988), “Push Comes to Shove” (1991), “The Wiseman” (1991), “How to Make Love to a Woman” (1996), “Sex and Violence” (1997), “Guard Dog” (2004), “The Fan and The Flower” (2005), “Guide Dog” (2006), “Hot Dog" (2008), “Santa, the Fascist Years” (2008), “Horn Dog” (2009), and, last but not least, “The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger” (2010).
The first screening of Bill’s work was on Aug. 30. Future screening dates have not yet been posted yet.
The Criterion Channel's other August highlights were 21 films from the Australia’s New Wave, four documentaries by Ron Mann, three films from director Bill Gunn, 11 films from Wim Wenders, and 16 documentaries from Berkeley's own Les Blank! Criterion's full August line-up was posted here. To sign up and get a 14-day free trial, head over here.
Learn About New Stop Motion Feature
They launched a Kickstarter on August 25 for the stop-motion feature “The Inventor”. The film is about Leonardo Da Vinci, written and directed by Jim Capobianco (“Ratatouille, “Mary Poppins” 2D part) who received an Oscar nomination for writing on “Ratatouille”. The crew has worked on “Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Coraline, “Isle of Dogs” and “Frankenweenie”. The film’s Kickstarter page is here.
Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Aug 23, 2020 - 05:52 AM