PLASTIC PAPER: WINNIPEG’S FESTIVAL OF ANIMATED, ILLUSTRATED + PUPPET FILM

I mounted this festival in 2010 and 2011 in Winnipeg, Canada – its pro­gram­ming is a mix of pre­mieres, ret­ro­spec­tive screen­ings, short films and fea­tures with spe­cial guests, work­shops, mul­ti-media pre­sen­ta­tions, instal­la­tions and exhibits, artist talks, and gath­er­ings where the artists and the audi­ence can inter­act more informally. It was programmed collaboratively by myself and The Big Smash! Film Collective.

For 2010 the Special Guests were BILL PLYMPTON, who presented an animation masterclass and HEATHER HENSON who presented the program Handmade Puppet Dreams. The festival opened with the Japanese shorts program Seconds Under the Sun curated by Naomi Hocura, and among the Winnipeg premieres were Brett Ingram’s Rocaterrania and Barry Doupé’s Ponytail.

The festival closed with an evening of expanded cinema: Bruce Bickford’s CAS’L with live score by Mahogany Frog, Irene Bindi’s Black Chalk with live score by D E A F S Q U A B and Doreen Girard’s Sontiainen with live score by Slattern.

From the 2011  Press release:

Spe­cial guests for the 2011 edi­tion will include ani­ma­tion leg­end RALPH BAK­SHI (Fritz the Cat, Lord of the Rings), who will be appear­ing in per­son to present his film Amer­i­can Pop and to give an artist talk at the open­ing vernissage for his visu­al arts exhib­it THE STREETS at RAW Gallery, and Mon­tréal under­ground car­toon­ist RICK TREM­BLES, who will present his Motion Pic­ture Pur­ga­to­ry: De-Cen­sor­tized expand­ed cin­e­ma show at our main venue, The Park Theatre.

Oth­er treats in this year’s line­up include the ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary AMER­I­CAN: THE BILL HICKS STO­RY, Brent Green’s ele­giac stop-motion fea­ture GRAV­I­TY WAS EVERY­WHERE BACK THEN, a ret­ro­spec­tive of the psy­che­del­ic short films of Japan­ese artist Kei­ichi Tanaa­mi, Math­ieu Weschler’s fea­ture-length machin­i­ma THE TRASH­MAS­TER (made com­plete­ly using source images from Grand Theft Auto 4), Albert Bir­ney + Jon Moses’ musi­cal stop-motion odd­i­ty THE BEAST PAGEANT and CODE IN MOTION, a short film pro­gram show­cas­ing ear­ly com­put­er ani­ma­tion, curat­ed by Clint Enns. Plas­tic Paper is also hon­oured to be pre­sent­ing the Man­i­to­ba pre­mière of THE FLO­RES­TINE COL­LEC­TION, the last film by ani­ma­tor Helen Hill, which was com­plet­ed posthu­mous­ly by her hus­band Paul Galiunas.

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