MORE SENSITIVE, an animated film about a musician playing before a drunken, oblivious audience in a piano bar, was awarded Best Animation at the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto this past weekend.
This is the second award for MORE SENSITIVE, which also won the Government of Canada Best Short Animation Award at the Victoria Independent Film & Video Festival in February 2004. Since then it has screened at 20 festivals across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Australia.
MORE SENSITIVE is the seventh film by award-winning animator Gail Noonan of Mayne Island. The two-minute film uses a multitude of animation techniques including cutouts, hand colored photographs, plasticine and stop-motion. It was shot on 35mm at Al Sens Animation in Vancouver.
The film incorporates both the music and the face of jazz musician and fellow Mayne Islander Kim Darwin who has played with various groups around Vancouver for a number of years. He originally penned the song as a self-parody of his days playing piano lounges in Vancouver. Noonan knew the moment she heard the song that it should be animated. Only after beginning production did she see the potential in the wonderfully elastic face of the composer himself.
The Female Eye Film Festival (www.femaleeyefilmfestival.com) was established in 2001 and prides itself in presenting high caliber films by women from around the globe.
For more information on Gail Noonan's work, visit www.cartoonan.com.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
