>>PREVIEW
PUPPETS ON SCREEN
January 22 and 23
International Festival of Animated Objects
Banker’s Hall Auditorium
There’s an apocryphal legend about one of the pioneering Lumière brothers’ early films, The Arrival of a Train at la Ciotat Station, that has its audience cowering in fear as the image of a steam engine barrels toward them. The lesson the legend teaches (people were stupid in olden times) isn’t true, but there’s no denying we’ve become so used to films that thinking of them as animated objects is just as foreign as a French audience wetting itself in a movie theatre during the 19th century.
It’s especially appropriate, then, that Puppets on Film run as part of the International Festival of Animated Objects. The two 40-minute programs will feature the most familiar animation techniques of the 20th and 21st centuries with short films featuring some of the festival’s many "animated object" genres, including puppetry, stop motion and claymation. Running during the lunch hour at Banker’s Hall, the program’s film focus is a touchstone that co-curator Peter Stinson hopes will bring in audiences that might not otherwise consider the festival’s performances.
"It’s always good to try and bring in other audiences," he says, "and I do know that because this is not like a film festival – this festival is about animated objects and puppetry – it’s pretty specific."
Though three of the festival’s guests, the Chiodo Brothers of Team America: World Police, are responsible for creating one of the largest puppetry films of all time, Stinson notes that for most artists, puppetry and claymation films are not viable as large projects.
"Puppet animation, claymations – they do lend themselves to short film," he says. "There are not that many feature films done with puppetry. It’s because they’re very time-consuming, expensive and they’re kind of unusual. The medium allows artists and filmmakers to be very creative in a short film, and try things that they would never be able to do in a feature film."
The two programs include films from Calgary, across Canada and international offerings, representing an intensive effort to balance the program. Several claymation films, for instance, were cut when the program grew to include too many. Not surprisingly, many play with the surrealism of their animated media; a pair of animals play together in an abandoned grain elevator in Graeme Patterson’s Monkey and Deer, and a fish dinner becomes an allegory for hunger and religion in Polish filmmaker Marek Skrobecki’s Ichthys. The program will also feature films with a more realistic bent, like the Swedish Blue Karma Tiger, an animated documentary on graffiti artists that uses real audio interviews with its subjects.
Locally, Lyle Pisio (Another Lost Soul) of tokyosexwhale and John Holt (Homo away from Home) have contributed films. Even festival director Xstine Cook will be premiering a film: Dead Boyfriends, a short film based on a song that came out of the Green Fools’s B&E Circus, featuring literal buckets of corn syrup blood.
Along with his partner, Brenda Whiteman, Stinson himself has produced a number of short films as Red Smarteez Marionettes, in addition to performing for corporate and school shows. Running separately from the Puppets on Film series, Red Smarteez will present Kay Stories, a mix of live and filmed puppetry focusing on Whiteman’s developmentally disabled sister, Kay, who passed away in 2001. With six short puppet films linked using live performances by puppet replicas of Stinson and Whiteman, the program looks back on Kay’s visits to Calgary with simple anecdotes about going out to see performance art, going to the zoo and shopping. Even if film has become so common that the magic of its animation no longer registers, Stinson hopes his film’s simplicity brings a magic of its own.
"It’s all about the dignity of the individual and how everyone’s life is worthwhile. Everyone has a story to tell despite how banal it might be," says Stinson.
"It’s very much about the community being very supportive of a person with a disability," he adds, "and how that acceptance is all taken with humour and patience and with people being decent to one another."
For more information on shows and times, check listings or visit www.animatedobjects.ca.
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ANIMATED OBJECTS SCHEDULE
Get Off The Cross, Mary!
Jan 20 & 21, 7:30 p.m. Calgary Opera Centre
$19/$16 CAOS members
Unstrung – an evening with Ronnie Burkett
Jan 22, 8 p.m. Vertigo Theatre Playhouse
$27/$24 CAOS members
Kay Stories – Red Smarteez
Jan 22 & 23 at 9:30 p.m., Jan 28 at 7:30 p.m. Vertigo Theatre Studio
$15/$12 CAOS members
The Glories of Gloria Revue
Jan 23 at 7:30 p.m., Jan 24 & 29 at 9:30 p.m. Vertigo Playhouse Studio
$19/$16 CAOS members
Our Traditions
Jan 25, 7:30 p.m. Jack Singer Concert Hall
$27/$24/$15/$12
The Mother of All Enemies
Jan 25 at 9:30 p.m., Jan 26 & 27 at 7:30 p.m. Vertigo Playhouse Studio
$19/$16 CAOS members
The Mask Messenger by Rob Faust
Jan 27 & 28 at 12:30 & 3:30 p.m. Vertigo Studio
$12/$10 CAOS members
Dolly Wiggler Cabaret
Jan 27 at 9:30 p.m., Jan 28 at 7:30 p.m. Vertigo Playhouse Studio
$27/$24 CAOS members
www.animatedobjects.ca |
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