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animate!’s Stirring the Past: Live Personal Journies invites two artists, Run Wrake and Max Hattler, to be VJs for the night and to re-visit each of their personal histories via their own home movie and video footage, accompanied by music important to events in their past.

The evening is part of the 4th Halloween Short Film Festival and takes place at the Roxy Bar & Screen, a new venue at London Bridge establishing itself as a hub for showcasing VJ sets from new and established names on the scene.

animate! comes to this event with a history of risk-taking projects since 1990, and approached the two filmmakers after being inspired by Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette’s groundbreaking documentary feature mashed up from his home movies. Stirring the Past brings a live – and possibly dangerous! – aspect to this same territory.

Run Wrake is the award-winning director of Rabbit, commissioned by animate! in 2004, and Jukebox, funded by animate! in 1994. He has worked on idents, live tours and music promos for MTV, U2, Howie B, The Charlatans, Oasis and many others musicians, as well as making various commercials.

Max Hattler graduated in Animation from the Royal College of Art in 2005 with Collision which won the LUX Award for Best Experimental Film at the 2006 Halloween Short Film Festival. As a VJ he has performed live throughout Europe, and has created promo videos for several bands.

Also screening on the night is Sound Mirrors, the latest work from Coldcut.

Roxy Bar & Screen
128-132 Borough High Street
London SE1 1LB
nearest tube station: London Bridge or Borough
admission: free, non-ticketed on a first come first served basis

Saturday 6 January 2007 19:00 Roxy Bar & Screen website › Map ›

Articulated is a free multi-sensory art exhibition by pioneering digital artists The Light Surgeons, bringing together a wide spectrum of interactive works, short films, live performance and theatre that investigates London and the city.

In collaboration with onedotzero festival, and commissioned by Nokia Nseries, artists from diverse backgrounds have created works which unravel a multitude of inter-connected human stories in the modern metropolis.

Throughout the ten days of Articulated, onedotzero’s cinematic and sonic exploration of the city presents guest speakers and screenings including James Price, Lenka Clayton, Iain Sinclair, Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, Gareth Evans, Philip Ilson, Halloween, animate!, BFI Free Cinema, special onedotzero curated selections and more, including:

animate! the City in the continuous DVD-otheque.
animate! presents a dynamic, diverting, sometimes disturbing but always hugely imaginative exploration of urban lives and locales. Nine wide-ranging films, selected from the ever-expanding catalogue of animate! tv commissions, reveal fresh perspectives of the city:

13 by Simon Faithfull, Black, White & Green by Ian Bourn, Dad’s Dead by Chris Shepherd, Ferment by Ian Macmillan, Flight by Dryden Goodwin, The Nuclear Train by Daniel Saul, Soho Square by Mario Cavalli, Stressed by Karen Kelly and What She Wants by Ruth Lingford.

Sunday 3 December 2006 14:30
Halloween Festival Director and animate! Coordinator Philip Ilson discusses city-themed shorts and the curation of the animate! the City programme with Gareth Evans, film critic, animate! Editor and Editor of film magazine Vertigo.

Bargehouse
Oxo Tower Wharf
Bargehouse Street
South Bank
London SE1 9PH
phone: (020) 8237 1111
nearest tube station: Waterloo or Southwark
admission: free, non-ticketed on a first come first served basis

1 – 10 December 2006 onedotzero Articulated webpages ›

Hot from the Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol (21 – 26 November)... The international animate! Artist Award, a new addition to the exciting list of Encounters’ prizes, is all about refreshing animation and the moving image – way beyond live-action.

242 films were submitted for the Award. Come and see a breath-taking shortlist of works from Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, France, Portugal, Croatia and the UK, including Empire, the final winner of the Award and £2,000 cash prize.

Brilliant Noise Semiconductor, UK 2006. Empire Edouard Salier, France 2005. Film Noir Osbert Parker, UK 2006. Leviathan Simon Bogojevic Narath, Croatia 2006. Los 60 Yolanda De Los Bueis, UK 2006. Never Like the First Time Jonas Odell, Sweden 2006. Park Foot Ball Grant Orchard, UK 2005. Sally Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters, The Netherlands 2005. Super 8 Series: Serie #1 Pedro Maia, Portugal 2006. Whirr Timo Katz, Germany 2006.

The animate! Book launch

Just published by LUX... a lavish and inspirational exploration of the relationship between art and animation, and the place of animation and its concepts in contemporary art practice.

The animate! Book: Rethinking Animation includes interviews with artists who have exploded the traditional preconceptions of animation in their commissions for animate!, and essays that examine animation and cinema up to and beyond the edge of film & video. With 870 full-colour illustrations plus a DVD of ten trail-blazing animate! works by Phil Mulloy, Mario Cavalli, William Latham, Ruth Lingford, Jonathan Hodgson, George Barber, Tim Macmillan, Olivier Harrison, Ann Course & Paul Clark and AL + AL.

Book list price £19.95. On sale at this animate! Artist Award programme for a special introductory price of £12.00 from the distributors Wallflower Press, who will also be selling other titles about animation, digital cinema and artists’ film & video on the night.

Curzon Soho Cinema
99 Shaftesbury Avenue
London W1D 5DY
box office: 0870 756 4620
nearest tube: Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square or Tottenham Court Road
admission: £5.50 / £4.50 concessions

Thursday 14 December 2006 18:00 Curzon Soho Cinema website ›

Five new animate! films receive their première broadcast in animate! tv on 10 December on Channel 4, starting at five past midnight (ie 00:05 on Monday morning).

Commissioned in 2005, they are Interstellar Stella by AL + AL, Proximity by Inger Lise Hansen, Purple Grey by Sebastian Buerkner, We Believe in Happy Endings by Monika Forsberg & Susie Sparrow and Yours Truly by Osbert Parker.

The seven artists introduce their new works in the hour-long programme, directed by Paul Bernays.

The sixth animate! film commissioned in 2005, From Nose to Mouth by Joji Koyama, premières on Channel 4 on Thursday 14 December at 27:40am (ie 03:40 on Friday morning).

Sunday 10 December 2006 24:05am

The Award for innovation in manipulated moving image was given in association with the Encounters Short Film Festival. 242 international submissions were assessed by the animate! jury for their success in challenging the boundaries of animation through radical content and ground-breaking concepts, forms and processes.

Empire was chosen by the jury for the Award and £2,000 cash prize “for its remarkable integration of form, technique and content, deploying digital technologies with glacial precision in its exploration of the pervasive, unsettling realities of our times. Empire is a work that understands instinctively the Faustian pact at the heart of our untenable lifestyles.”

Empire (Edouard Salier, France 2005, 4 min) was produced by Nicolas Schmerkin at Autour de Minuit and can be viewed on Edouard Salier’s website.

Edouard Salier received the Award on Saturday 25 November at the Encounters Short Film Festival awards ceremony in Bristol.

Jury for the animate! Artist Award:
Jacqui Davies Line Producer for animate! commissions, and independent producer
Gareth Evans animate! Editor, Editor Vertigo magazine, and independent programmer
Pinky Ghundale independent producer of artists’ moving image work
Philip Ilson animate! Coordinator, and Halloween Film Festival
Idris Khan artist working in film and photography
Dick Arnall animate! Producer, and producer at Finetake

Contributors: Dick Arnall, Edwin Carels, Gareth Evans, Angela Kingston, Mike Sperlinger and Ian White

The animate! Book: Rethinking Animation

animate!, the ground-breaking commissioning project established by Arts Council England and Channel 4 which supports risk-taking and experimental animation works for television, is the focus of The animate! Book, just published by LUX in collaboration with Arts Council England.

Since 1990 animate! has commissioned 84 dynamic and diverse films including works from David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd (Who I Am and What I Want), Run Wrake (Rabbit) and AL + AL (Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey and Interstellar Stella), amongst others.

The animate! Book, illustrated with 870 full-colour film images and graphics, explores the vibrant discourses round the scheme, taking animate! as a starting point for a wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between art and animation, and the place of animation and its concepts in contemporary art practice.

Edwin Carels in his essay Animation = A multiplication of art forms explores the historical oscillation of animation between art and cinema in critical discourse. In Build it and They Will Come: animate! and the Extended Imagination Gareth Evans and Dick Arnall trace the history of the animate! commissions in terms of paradigm shifting moments in both animation technology and practice. In his essay Occupation: Animation and the Visual Arts Ian White draws out some of the darker connotations inherent in animation concepts and traces them through the work of visual artists who are not usually known as ‘animators’. Angela Kingston describes the particular challenges of working with animation in a gallery context and exploring ideas of animation cross medium, beyond film and video.

Mike Sperlinger interviews eight animators – AL + AL, Paul Bush, Ann Course, Inger Lise Hansen, Jonathan Hodgson, Tim Hope, Ruth Lingford, Tim Macmillan – who have been commissioned by animate!, about their practice and perspectives on animation.

The book additionally comes with a DVD of ten films commissioned by animate! representing the diversity of projects that the project has supported which includes Cowboys / That’s Nothin’ Phil Mulloy (1991), Soho Square Mario Cavalli (1992), Biogenesis William Latham (1993), What She Wants Ruth Lingford (1994), Feeling My Way Jonathan Hodgson (1997), Withdrawal George Barber (1997), Ferment Tim Macmillan (1999), Love is All Olivier Harrison (1999), Rotting Artist Ann Course & Paul Clark (2002), Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey AL + AL (2004).

Available by mail order, postage free to UK & Europe, from LUX shop

Published by LUX in collaboration with Arts Council England
ISBN 0-9548569-1-0
Paperback plus DVD (PAL/ Region Free)
UK £19.95
November 2006
Distributed by Wallflower Press

In the third of a unique monthly series, experimental animation project animate! presents features, shorts and documentaries that take life beyond live action into a delirious, unsettling, inspiring and stunningly imaginative realm, where the visual meets the visionary.

animate! Rogue Talents double bill 3: Future Worlds
Films that look beyond science fiction clichés to exciting yet human future worlds.


Shorts Beyond the Horizon 15 6.45pm
Some of the most striking worlds on screen have been realised in animated/manipulated shorts. All the films in this wide-ranging and dynamic selection, including four animate! commissions, travel way beyond the horizon of live-action cinema.
Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey AL + AL, UK 2004, 7 min. Re-fabricates the lifelong endeavours of grandfather James Brown, a retired engineer and inventor living in the north of England, to break the law of physics and create a perpetual motion device.
Street Of Crocodiles Quay Brothers, UK 1986, 21 min. A homage to Bruno Schulz, set in a mythical land with a population of either half-dead or half-alive people oblivious to anyone else’s movements.
The Nuclear Train Daniel Saul, UK 2002, 9 min. James is deeply disturbed by the heavy vibrations made by the train carrying nuclear waste past his home.

The Nuclear Train © Daniel Saul 2002

Future War Tim Hope, UK 2000, 15 min. The Pod (with guest stars the Mighty Boosch) imagine a world where retro is king and the future needs to be reclaimed.
A Quiet Week In The House Jan Svankmajer, Czechoslovakia 1969, 20 min. A man on the run takes shelter in a dilapidated house. Every day, he drills a hole through a wall and looks into one of the rooms, each time seeing a different surreal vision…
Half Life Matt Hulse, UK 2004, 6 min. Isolated office workers perform gruelling and surrealistic routines in this intense, neurotic study of the desk-bound being.
Interstellar Stella AL + AL, UK 2006, 12 min. A sumptuous but enigmatic and twisted drama following a photographer as he travels through the lens to do battle in a world of perfect illusions.

Existenz 18 9.00pm
(David Cronenberg, Canada/UK/France, 1999) 93 min
With Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm.

eXistenZ © Alliance Atlantis Films 1999

A games designer creates a virtual-reality experience that taps directly into the players’ consciousness and seriously challenges the boundaries between waking, dreaming and delirium. One of Cronenberg’s most impressive recent explorations of the interface between humanity and the machine, and between the rational and the nightmarishly imagined.

Riverside Studios
Crisp Road
Hammersmith
London W6 9RL
box office: (020) 8237 1111
nearest tube station: Hammersmith
admission: £6.50 / £5.50 (concessions) for each half or the whole of the animate! double bill

Thursday 7 December 2006 18:45 Riverside Studio website › Map ›

The celebrated pair of Bristol international film festivals, Brief Encounters and Animated Encounters, have united into one Encounters Short Film Festival. The new Encounters is the largest UK celebration of the present and future of short filmmaking, across six days packed with live action shorts and animation.

animate! is proud to add a new award to the exciting list of Encounters’ prizes, the animate! Artist Award for innovation in manipulated moving image.

This is not the usual sort of award for craft or story-telling excellence. The animate! jury has selected films that seriously challenge the boundaries of animation through radical content and ground-breaking concepts, forms and processes.

Wednesday 22 November 17:45
A breath-taking shortlist of 13 films from 242 international submissions for the animate! Artist Award (programme for Animation Industry Day delegates only):
Brilliant Noise Semiconductor, UK 2006. Empire Edouard Salier, France 2005. Film Noir Osbert Parker, UK 2006. Get Good Francois & Rozi Plain, UK 2006. Gravenhurst: The Velvet Cell Thomas Hicks, UK 2005. Guy 101 Ian Gouldstone, UK 2005. Leviathan Simon Bogojevic Narath, Croatia 2006. Los 60 Yolanda De Los Bueis, UK 2006. Never Like the First Time Jonas Odell, Sweden 2006. Park Foot Ball Grant Orchard, UK 2005. Sally Luna Maurer & Roel Wouters, The Netherlands 2005. Super 8 Series: Serie #1 Pedro Maia, Portugal 2006. Whirr Timo Katz, Germany 2006.

Saturday 25 November 19:30
Festival Awards Ceremony including announcement of the winner of the animate! Artist Award with £2,000 cash prize, for refreshing animation and the moving image – way beyond live-action.

Sunday 26 November 16:15
Repeat of Wednesday’s animate! Artist Award shortlisted submissions (public programme)

Thursday 23 November 14:00
Idris Khan Filmmaker Focus session (delegates only):
One of the UK’s brightest emerging talents, Idris Khan creates multi-layered photographs, often of appropriated art and books. His work explores the history of photography and literature, memory and the beauty of repetition.
Idris recently had two solo shows in London, of his photographic works at the Victoria Miro Gallery and of his debut film A Memory… after Bach’s Cello Suites at inIVA. He was featured in The Independent Magazine as one of the ‘Faces to Watch in 2006’ and in Art Review ‘Future Greats’.
He is screening his debut film work and his influences in this session.
Idris is a member of the animate! Artist Award jury.

Watershed Media Centre
1 Canon’s Road
Harbourside
Bristol BS1 5TX
box office: (0117) 927 5100

21 – 26 November 2006 Encounters festival website › map ›

The tenth annual RESFEST started in Chicago in October and is travelling to more than 45 cities on six continents. The peripatetic event has a world-wide reputation for innovative film, music, art, design, fashion, culture and technology. Core programmes feature the latest and most exciting short-form work encompassing music videos, animation and design films, and include many UK and world premieres.

animate! is pleased to offer a preview opportunity at RESFEST London of this year’s animate! tv commissions, before they premiere on Channel 4 next month. This special programme also includes a bonus hand-picked selection of animate! tv films from last year.

Saturday 18 November 2006 18:10
animate! tv 2006 Previews. Exciting new works take startling graphic journeys, reveal unsettling undercurrents and discover dazzling digital domains:
Careful (2005) by Damian Gascoigne, Flight (2005) by Dryden Goodwin, Who I Am and What I Want (2005) by David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd, From Nose to Mouth (2006) by Joji Koyama, Interstellar Stella (2006) by AL + AL, Proximity (2006) by Inger Lise Hansen, Purple Grey (2006) by Sebastian Buerkner, and We Believe in Happy Endings (2006) by Monika Forsberg & Susie Sparrow.

National Film Theatre
South Bank
Waterloo
London SE1 8XT
box office: (020) 7928 3232
online ticket booking

14 – 19 November 2006 RESFEST website › NFT map ›