Twas the night before LIAF,
And all through HQ,
Was a strange sense of calm and…
‘HOLY CR*P WE’RE OPENING A FESTIVAL TOMORROW!!!’
Boxes everywhere, literally everywhere: under desks; on top of desks; inbetween desks; being used as desks… all stuffed with various bits of festival booty. Some of these boxes hold the most beautiful, crisply-crafted and professionally bound blank flipbooks from Shepherds Falkiners (we called them a few months ago about our Flipbook Challenge and they could not have been more supportive. So much so, they offered to donate these bespoke beauties!). Said flipbooks are blank and ready for YOUR Flipbook Challenge entries. Find out more here.
So yeh, we’re calm, strangely calm here… which is good.
LIAF Director Nag Vladermersky and Co-Director Malcolm Turner (from our sister-festival MIAF) are tonight mulling over their questions for Ralph Steadman, Charlie Paul and Kevin Richards, which you’ll get the chance to hear following our Gala Opening feature documentary ‘For No Good Reason’. For those of you unfamiliar with Ralph (where have you been?) he’s the seminal British artist who is probably best described as follows:
“Steadman rose to prominence in the early 70’s when his impassioned and stirring images gained recognition through popular cultural publications and press both in the UK and US for their bold comment on world politics and human rights infringements.”
He’s a bit of a legend really… He’s also the subject of this documentary, which boasts a liberal peppering of gorgeously animated sequences that gift motion to art that already explodes out of the page at you with a delightfully inky splat. Oh and did we mention it stars Johnny Depp (you wouldn’t believe how many excited enquiries we’ve had about The Depp!).
This is a seriously good watch and without giving too much away, look out for – archive footage of Ralph and frenemy Hunter S Thompson (really compelling viewing); the contributions of a certain Terry Gilliam; and the onscreen evolution of Ralph’s art – behold as the inherent entropy of a random flick of ink is tamed by the Master into an altogether different beast.
Director Charlie Paul’s dedication to capturing artistic processes includes the long-term installation of a stop-frame camera above Ralph’s work station for TEN years, just busily capturing away. This will no doubt be the basis of at least one ‘Q’ for tomorrow’s Q&A. Along with how Kevin Richards went about the process of animating right up to the point of a Ralph Steadman original. There will be more Qs of course, and they are being mulled over, right about now.
So, on that note, it’s time for a quick pre-fest nap. If you’d like to join us for our Gala Opening, you can find out more here. Until tomorrow…
Now can anyone find a way out of this box maze?
