LIAF kick-started the Summer of animation at the Barbican with a fantastic, near full-house screening of some of the greatest films that have screened at LIAF over the years, as well as a look forward to this year’s LIAF with one of the films that is sure to have people around Festival-time talking– ‘Bobby Yeah’.
The films were chosen to illustrate the breadth of different styles, techniques and genres that have graced the screens at past LIAFs. The audience was treated to Steven Woloshen’s exhilirating scratch animation ‘The Curse of the Voodoo Child’ set to Jimi Hendrix’s scorching soundtrack, Don Hertzfeldt’s heart-felt, moving and hilarious ‘I Am So Proud of You’, Liz Hobbs poignant tale of old age in ‘The Old, Old, Very Old Man’ along with six other inspiring and amazing films. This was partly a screening of guilty pleasures (we love all of these films and could watch them over and over again!) and partly a screening to show that the best animated films have no limits or boundaries.
The evening was rounded off with an onstage Q and A conducted by Nag Vladermersky and three of our most talented contemporary filmmakers – all of whom had films screening in this programme – Liz Hobbs (‘The Old, Old, Very Old Man’), Joseph Pierce (‘Stand Up’) and Robert Morgan (‘Bobby Yeah’). Obsession and obsessive attention to detail was a subject discussed, demonstrated by Robert’s admission that he had spent a year collecting his own toenails to make one of the puppets in his film ‘Bobby Yeah’ which he described quite aptly as a “sex comedy”. Liz regaled us all with the story of how she persuaded the great actor Edward Fox to record the narration and voices for her film for the princely sum of £250 and Joseph talked eloquently about what being an animator meant to
him.
We’ll be posting highlights from the Q and A on our Daily Motion channel very soon, so look out for it.
