Podcast: Annecy 2019 award winners
In episode 91 of the Skwigly Animation Podcast we talk through some of the film highlights of this year’s Annecy festival award winners, including new work from Bruno Collet, Ludovic Houplain, Thomas Renoldner, Pedro Casavecchia and Daria Kashcheeva.
We’re also delighted to welcome special guest Regina Pessoa, whose latest film Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days picked up the special award for Best Original Music as well as the Jury Award for a Short Film following its debut earlier this month at Animafest Zagreb.
Produced seven years after the director’s multi-award-winning trilogy of filmic musings on childhood that also included herdebut short The Night (1999), Tragic Story with Happy Ending (2005) and Kali the Little Vampire (2012), Uncle Thomas this time examines her own childhood from the perspective of an adult looking back, with a focus on analysing her memories of a charming and idiosyncratic family member whose alternative approach to life and curious obsessions contributed significantly to the artist she herself would become.
Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days is about the special relationship between Regina Pessoa and her uncle. The short film is a testament to her love for this eccentric, who was an artistic inspiration and played a key role in her becoming a filmmaker. It’s also a moving tribute to a poet of the everyday who was obsessed by numbers and calculations.
Pessoa takes the viewer to Portugal, reading a very personal letter to her late uncle, inspired by her many memories of the man. This narrative approach is at once poignant and compelling, highlighting her undeniable formal mastery and a distinctive engraving aesthetic that wields textures, shadow, and light to create an account that’s both personal and universal.
We also speak with Jérémy Clapin, another double-winner at this year’s edition whose new feature film I Lost My Body won the Audience Award and the Cristal for a Feature Film. Having also picked up the Nespresso Grand Prize after screening at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival’s International Critics’ Week the film has been picked up for distribution by Netflix.
A cut-off hand escapes from a dissection lab with one crucial goal: to get back to its body. As it scrambles through the pitfalls of Paris, it remembers its life with the young man it was once attached to… until they met Gabrielle.
Having studied at Paris ENSAD where he got his degree in 1999, Jérémy’s previous work spans illustration, art direction, commercial animation for clients including SNCF and Citroen as well as the short films A Backbone Tale (2004), Skhizein (2008) and Palmipedarium (2012).
Also discussed in this episode: Annecy’s swelling footfall, making Aladdin ‘hip’, when post-production works against animation and the plight of long-running Brazilian festival Anima Mundi, who are presently raising funds to ensure next month’s edition can go ahead.
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