On Tuesday April 20th my class attended the 2010 Sprockets Film Festival. We spent the day at a movie theatre watching an assortment of small shorts and one full length film. The age range was vast throughout the event and many had the opportunity to talk to those who had a role in creating the films. Directors, writers and artists were all available for a Q and A session.
As for my favourite film, I liked one of the short films best. It was called 'Iran: A Nation of Bloggers'. This was may favourite for a few simple reasons with the first and most important being that it made me think. The film was just a short animation about new technologies, in specific blogging, that allow opinions to be formed and presented to the world in a place that you could die for having an alternative opinion. According to this film Iran has the 3rd largest collection of bloggers. Can't they die if caught? Why risk your life to state an opinion? What sort of opinion is so important? How will figures in power handle this? How are figures in power handling this? ... These were some thoughts that were brought up in my mind as I watched. The animation seemed to fit the mood. Fast flashing images formed an intense visual to go with the facts being told. I found them very effective as well as the colours and artist choices made.
If you look at this still frame taken from the film you can see many things. The lighting is dim and the colours dark perhaps showing the darkened times Iran is facing. The thing though that I love so much artistically in this still in particular is the wall paper. It is damask wall paper which was used in powerful, rich , well respected homes in the past. It was a traditional wallpaper and still is today. I think this could contrast against the blogging as writing a blog is not traditional or considered 'proper' there. Are these blogger's opinions breaking the traditions found in Iran? The computer screen does split the wallpaper in half and cover most of it up. What do you think?
As I mentioned earlier we watch a full length film as well. It was call 'U' (pronounced "ooo" like ooo la la) and made in France. It was interesting to watch as it was in french and so different from any animation I've seen in North America. Even the drawings were weird to me (Picture of U on the left and Lazare on the right). The story was about a dog princess that is lonely and lives with two rats who are her guardians. She then meets U a unicorn who makes her very happy until Lazare (a lizard) and his family come to live in a nearby tree. The princess falls in love with Lazare's brother which causes U to shrink because she no longer in need. I found the story a little too jumpy in the film and way over sexualized for a children's film. It seemed like every few minutes a hidden sexual comment was being told and almost every character was naked in the film. These two things sort of bothered me as I am not sure I would want young kids watching it. Maybe in France this is normal to watch but living in North America it is not so obvious in children's films. With that beings said, Disney animations do have sexual jokes hidden in some of their films but I find them to be much more discrete and the characters are not obviously naked. I also enjoy the style of cartoon drawing Disney films rather than the style of 'U'. This may be a bit biased as I grew up on North American films rather than European ones. It was a good experience to see different perspectives on animation and film though. It was a good learning experience.
Katelynn
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