Notes from the Underground Part Six — From Mary Ellen Bute to Pierre Hébert, Animation in a Different Key! | AWN

Notes from the Underground Part Six — From Mary Ellen Bute to Pierre Hébert, Animation in a Different Key!

In this final installment of articles exploring animation as commercial entertainment and as an art form, Jean Detheux heralds a group of animators who listened to their own music and delivered it up on the animated screen.

By Jean Detheux | Monday, June 30, 2003 at 12:00 am

Posted In | Magazines: AnimationWorld | Columns: DigitalNotes

Indeed, animation is not rocket science (or at least need not be). Just like drawing and painting (and so much more), it can stem from some very basic needs and abilities "in" us. If we are given, if we take the time to simply "play," one hopes aimlessly, we are bound to connect with "something."

That "something" is most likely what "it" is all about, and I have been pointing to it all through these articles. Whether we value this or not is a matter of personal decision. It should be very obvious by now where I stand on this issue. I have been talking about "inherent animation" here for more than a year.

Children know how to "play" this way. That is how they manage to learn so much, often in spite of school and adults who are so eager to teach them "how to." (My best regards go to Maria Montessori and John Holt’s heritage.)

"Inherent animation" is to me a reality, though one that is constantly overlooked, even snuffed out, by the sickly need to conform and the power trip most animators are on these days.

A good friend, Sharon Katz, is an artist who, like me, comes to animation by way of painting and drawing. Sharon has two films doing the festival rounds, Happy Birthday Hanna and Angel's Foot Cake.

She's busy trying to find another way into storytelling in her animation, a way that will be more in tune with her experience as a painter. She is attempting to do something that I think is very complicated. In as much as she refuses to follow established paths, she's basically reinventing the wheel her way; something I wish more of us would do as well.

(In fact, Pierre Hébert posits that animation is actually reinventing the wheel of cinema with every frame.)

Here are a few samples of what Sharon has come up with so far:


Crow (left) and Bird by Sharon Katz. © Sharon Katz

Now we take a brief look at a 10-second excerpt from Martine Chartrand's Black Soul.

With this beautiful animation, Martine won the Golden Bear award for best short film at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival. This is a fascinating animation, I have seen it many times, and each time I am deeply moved by its ending. I have asked friends to view it too, and we seem to agree on its being a very powerful piece indeed. Martine paints on glass, and this allows for some terrific images. As each image, or just about, becomes "raw material" from which the next image is made, there is a deep continuity that sustains the whole movie. This working method makes Martine a natural for "going digital" and using Studio Artist too. Black Soul is to me one of the best examples available today of storytelling in an intelligent, visually literate and painterly way.

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Thanks a lot. I needed that.

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Daniel Poeira (not verified) | Tue, 07/08/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

To Tony Saliste: You say: “yes, pablum, as you call it, is pervasive today... but, like they say about tv, that's what the remote is for. mindless stupidity is present in many areas, and all some are capable of... leave them to it.” Tony, zapping is only as good as that which we can zap to. There are practically no alternatives to pabulum these days, the “suits” have managed, through decades of enforced dumbing down programming, to create expectations in the minds of the viewers so that pabulum is what is mostly expected (and offered). Read the comments to my six articles, time and again you will see this visceral reaction to my positing “Art” as important and distinct from (indeed "better than") “entertainment,” accusing me of being “elitist.” Animation is this amazing medium that is being totally swamped by mindless stupidity, “escapism” (“Prozac”) is the dominant force in it, and I most certainly see no openness to something a bit more “mature,” more life-sustaining. Even animation festivals are under the crunch of budget cuts unless they go even more into commercial servitude. And as for TV, that is utterly hopeless, when was the last time you had a chance to see quality animation on it, with or without cable? You say: “the problem, and i think you will agree, is so much of it is 'published' and deemed as 'art'... perhaps to them it is. others of us may not 'like' that, but, so what? if no one pays attention to it, it, too, shall pass. when the 'suits' have squeezed the last nickle out of any fad, true 'art' will survive.” Indeed, we are in a situation that is quite amazing, the “brainwashing” has been so very successful, the expectations have been shaped so “well,” and the frame of reference contained even “better” (the Weltanschauung), the more one focuses on intrinsic worth and inherent universal “stuff,” the more one appears to be an “outsider.” As I said in some of my previous writing, the basic belief is that “the eye works like a camera and we all see the same thing.” That is likely why so many “different” major animation productions actually look the same to me, they all are born of the same world view. You say: “if it takes another 50 years, i say, have at it, knock yourselves out. just don't expect to make a fan out of me.” You must be a lot younger than me, I most definitely do not have 50 years ahead of me, far from it. Besides, why should one wait? If one can switch from being a mere viewer to becoming a doer, now’s the (only?) time!

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Jean Detheux (not verified) | Sat, 07/05/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

jean, what you say is true, if a bit too far in the other direction... i'm sure your intent was not to stifle exploration of the media, including animation and music. there are more than two sides to animation, as in all art, stories, or lies. yes, pablum, as you call it, is pervasive today... but, like they say about tv, that's what the remote is for. mindless stupidity is present in many areas, and all some are capable of... leave them to it. the problem, and i think you will agree, is so much of it is 'published' and deemed as 'art'... perhaps to them it is. others of us may not 'like' that, but, so what? if no one pays attention to it, it, too, shall pass. when the 'suits' have squeezed the last nickle out of any fad, true 'art' will survive. if it takes another 50 years, i say, have at it, knock yourselves out. just don't expect to make a fan out of me.