New mockumentary feature film from Academy Award-nominated king of indie animation to premiere at SVA on June 1; ‘Hitler’s Folly’ available for free download on June 3.
‘Hitler’s Folly.’ All images courtesy of Plymptoons.
NEW YORK -- Plymptoons has announced the US release date of Bill Plympton’s new feature mockumentary Hitler’s Folly, a merciless satire in which Adolf Hitler is reimagined as a successful animator and artist.
Hitler’s Folly will be released for free download at www.plymptoons.com on Friday, June 3. There will also be a New York premiere of Hitler’s Folly on Wednesday, June 1 at 7:00pm at SVA Theater (333 W 23rd St), followed by a Q &A with filmmaker Plympton. After the screening, Plympton will also do special live drawings of a character from the film for interested fans. The screening is free and open to the public. RSVP is required for admittance via follyrsvp@gmail.com (link sends e-mail). Seating for the evening is strictly on a first-come, first-served basis.
A merciless satire from Academy Award-nominee Plympton, Hitler's Folly explores what might have happened if Adolf Hitler's art career had been more successful and instead of becoming an evil dictator, he was inspired to become an animator like Walt Disney.
Using World War II footage, Hitler's early artwork, and Plympton's signature animation, this dark mockumentary re-imagines history and explores Hitler's unfulfilled animation career in the spirit of The Producers by Mel Brooks, Der Fuhrer's Face by Walt Disney and Blitz Wolf by Tex Avery.
The film stars Dana Ashbrook (Twin Peaks) as Josh and Nate Steinwachs as Hitler.
Hitler’s Folly is directed, designed, animated, and written by Plympton, long-considered the king of indie animation. The first person One of the first people to hand-draw an entire animated feature film, Plympton moved to New York City in 1968 and began his career creating cartoons for publications such as New York Times, National Lampoon, Playboy and Screw. [UPDATE: A few helpful AWN readers have pointed out that the first single-handed animated feature was The Point, released in 1971 and produced by Fred Wolf and Jimmy Murakami at what was then known as Murakami Wolf Films. Other readers pointed to Disney’s 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs feature but, while the movie is comprised of a whopping 1.5 million hand-drawn cels, they weren’t drawn by a single person.]
In 1987, Plympton was nominated for an Oscar for his animated short Your Face. In 2005, he received another Oscar nomination, this time for his short Guard Dog. Push Comes to Shove won the prestigious Cannes 1991 Palme d'Or; and, in 2001, another short film, Eat, won the Grand Prize for Short Films in Cannes Critics’ Week.
Since 1991, Plympton has made eleven feature films. Eight of them, The Tune, Mondo Plympton, I Married a Strange Person, Mutant Aliens, Hair High, Idiots and Angels, Cheatin' and Revengeance are all animated features. Plympton has also collaborated with Madonna, Kanye West and Weird Al Yankovic in a number of music videos and book projects. In 2006, he received the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award from The Annie Awards.
Source: Plymptoons
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
