Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
The King and I has some great musical numbers, but overall it’s a pretty dang offensive and stupid movie. Luckily, it’s given a new life by Fagottron:
Fagottron is the same remix artist who gave us the stunning “Alice”:
Remember the days before digital copying? Every copy introduced small errors; a copy was always a degraded, inferior version of its parent. But entropy has a beauty of its own, as in this beautiful film By Alexander Stewart (it’s not embeddable, so you have to follow this link):
Errata is an animation made by photocopying copies of copies. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, each successive copy becomes a frame of animation, meaning that each on-screen image is a copy of the last. All movements, pans and zooms in the film were accomplished using standard zoom and shrink features on copy machines; the animation camera used to shoot the copies onto 16mm film was not used to manipulate or direct the film’s motion. Comprising thousands of copies made on a dozen copiers, the resulting imagery is a moving Rorschach test of analog textures, bleeding ink spots and pareidolic cloud formations.
In contrast, digital copies are perfect – indistinguishable from their “originals.” Compression, however, retains that exciting element of entropy, as artist hadto demonstrates:
Granted he intentionally increased the compression from frame to frame; the discussion on the video page is enlightening (and led me to Errata in the first place).
I can’t get this song out of my head, nor this beautiful animation out of my mind’s eye:
Read all about how this video was made here.
I finished it back in March, but neglected to upload it to archive.org until today. This one features the voices of Bhavana Nagulapally, Aseem Chhabra and Manish Acharya at the beginning.
You can see some other clips from Sita on composer Todd Michaelsen’s professional reel here.
We have a whole mess o’ festival screenings coming up in November. The ones I will actually be at, in person:
NEW YORK, Nov 8 and 9:
Saturday, Nov. 8, 11:00 am
Sunday, Nov. 9, 11:00 am
IFC Center (323 6th Ave @W 4th St., Greenwich Village)
These matinee screenings are part of the New York Children’s Film Festival. (Sita isn’t exactly a kid’s movie, but it plays very well to older kids and teens and their parents)
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 13:
Nov. 13: 7:00 pm and 9:15 pm with a reception in between.
Opening the San Francisco International Animation Festival
Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema (Battery @ Clay st, downtown SF)
NEW YORK again:
Thursday Nov. 20, 6:00 pm
Saturday Nov. 22, 3:00 pm
MoMA (11 W. 53 Street, between 5th & 6th aves)
In the Film exhibition Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You (Gotham Award nominees)Monday November 24: Panel Discussion
The five nominees for this year’s Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award gather for a panel discussion illustrated with film clips. Program 90 min.
MoMA‘s Theater 3, mezzanine, Education & Research Center
More November screenings that I won’t be able to attend, but I hope you go if you’re in the area:
Ft. Lauderdale (FL) Int’l Film Festival, Nov 7
World Film Festival of Bangkok (Thailand), Oct 24-Nov 2
Winnipeg Animation Festival (MN, Canada), Oct 29-Nov 2
Festival voix d’Etoiles (France), Oct 30-Nov 2
Moscow Big Cartoons Festival (Russia), Nov 1-16
Leeds Int’l Film Festival (UK), Nov 4-16
Holland Animation Festival (The Netherlands), Nov 5-9
Asheville Film Festival (NC), Nov 6-9
Flip Animation Festival (UK), Nov 6-8
Olympia Film Festival (WA), Nov 14
Beyond Borders Film Festival, (MN), Nov 15
Check out the occasionally-updated full screening list here.