Manchester Animation Festival - Day One

At the painful hour of 5:30am, I got out of bed and got ready to go to Manchester for MAF - Manchester Animation Festival, the place where hundreds of short films and a handful of feature films are shown over three days, accompanied by various talks, workshops, and masterclasses. 

Once we arrived on Tuesday, the first thing we headed to see were the Shorts 1, a collection of short films produced in a variety of styles and techniques. What I found most enlightening about this trip was discovering just how wide the scope of animation really is - anything can be animated, with live action being integrated too. It isn't as confined as a I originally thought.

One animation that stood out to me from Shorts 1 was a four minute film called Parade. It had no dialogue, and instead the music acted as the driving narrative, as well as the images of a happy troupe juxtaposed with the bleakness of war and conflict. The hand-painted style appealed to me as someone who enjoys clean, block colours and a simplistic style, and the use of music throughout to almost act as a voice for the characters was highly effective.

It also reminded me of another animated video I had seen a few months ago, called MitchiriNeko March, a cute and colourful Japanese animation about cats in a happy marching band. In comparison, while MitchiriNeko is playful and innocent, Parade begins with the air of similar happiness which soon turns to a dark reality as the horrors of war are explored in the same colourful manner.

 

Another impactful animation I saw on the first day was called My Life as a Courgette, a French stop-motion feature film. When viewing this, it struck me how tame mainstream animation is, and how also that animation (meaning Disney, Dreamworks, etc) is the mainstream - what most people think of when you talk about animation. There are stories being told elsewhere, important stories, but they don't get the same amount of recognition as the more popular stuff. Additionally, since My Life as a Courgette addressed the hard-hitting issues of abuse, alcoholism, and even suicide, it would be difficult to say this is a kids film, even though it is about kids. Still, it is in the same colourful style as most children's animated movies, which really throws into perspective the depth of the children's hardships. 

My Life as a Courgette was my favourite feature film from the festival, and I would love a chance to see it again, having already watched and become familiar with it. 

Finally on Tuesday we got a chance to watch Aardman get presented with the Fellowship award and reflect over the history of Aardman. Having grown up on Wallace and Gromit, as well as other Aardman animations, it felt almost comforting to watch these and inspiring to see how far a company can go. 40 years of hard work, as Peter Lord put it. They were not as big 40 years ago as they are now, and it was amazing to see where a company and individual can go by dedicating themselves to their work.