This year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival will be showcasing a series of specially curated retrospectives exploring the work of two of the industry’s most prolific artists.
The work of American filmmaker Bruce Bickford and Canada’s own Michèle Cournoyer will be presented as a complement to the festival’s world-class competitions, and both animators will be in attendance to discuss their films with the audience.
The festival brings in more than 1,500 out-of-town delegates from around the world who pump at least $1 million into the city each year during the four-day event. The festival takes place in venues across the downtown core.
“It’s a huge benefit to the city,” says OIAF managing director Kelly Neall. “It’s also a great chance for people in town to experience world-class films.”
Despite the high status of these artists, Neall says the vast majority of the festival-goers are there for the competitions, which are some of the most challenging in the industry.
“We are one of the hardest festivals to get into because there are so many entries,” says Neall. “We really look for films that push the envelope and try new things. They have to be really original and extremely well done. It’s like the Olympics of animation.”
What special presentations such as the Bickford and Cournoryer retrospectives do for the festival, Neall says, is significantly enrich it for the audiences.
Chris Robinson, artistic director of the OIAF, describes Cournoyer’s work as “deeply personal and very edgy. It makes the viewer uncomfortable…and not enough animation does that today. Her films are nice and raw, taking the audience to places they know but rarely want to acknowledge.”
Robinson has similar things to say about Bickford’s work.
“Bickford’s clay animations smash perceptions of what Claymation is if viewers know it only through Wallace and Gromit,” Robinson says. “But more than that, his stories are just so utterly unique and personal, strange and mesmerizing.”
Showcasing animators who choose to push boundaries at a festival as large as OIAF is something that should be done as often as possible, says Neil Hunter, professor of animation and program coordinator at Algonquin College.
“Independent or experimental animation needs to be seen,” he says. “They bring a different aesthetic to commercial animation. Although there is a wide variety of styles employed in commercial animation, they tend to stay within pretty confined borders as far as style and design go. There are times that advancements in pushing design styles made by independent films find their way into mainstream animation, and that is awesome.”
Bickford achieved notoriety in the 1970s through his work with American musician Frank Zappa. He is best known for his bizarre and captivating line and clay animations. The self-taught, enigmatic and esteemed animation pioneer has earned a worldwide following of animation aficionados enthralled by his work, which an OIAF press release describes as “ingenious, disturbing, lysergic, phantasmagorical, often violent, eye-popping, and mind-bogglingly unique.”
Cournoyer, a native of Saint-Joseph-de-Sorel, Que., earned her reputation as a world class animator through her National Film Board-recognized work, which often features personal conflict as the central theme.
“In her trademark black ink style and metamorphic choreography, Cournoyer’s surreal, tense and deeply personal films confront powerful subject matter ranging from alcoholism and sexual abuse to other violations of the mind and body,” Robinson said in a festival press release.
The presentation of Bruce Bickford: Wondering Boy Poet will take place on Thursday at 7 p.m. and again on Friday at 9:15 p.m. at the National Gallery Auditorium. Bickford will also lead a master class on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Arts Court Theatre.
Isolation Drills: The Films of Michèle Cournoyer is screened on Friday at 3 p.m. at the ByTowne Cinema and again on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the National Gallery. Blow Up: Drawings By Michèle Cournoyer, an exhibition of a selection of drawings from Cournoyer’s films, will be on display at the Arts Court Studio during the festival.