We all know that animation has commonly been used to bring products to life, create dynamic visual aids for educational films, or provide a stimulus or communication tool for scientific experiments. Yet, in scholarly efforts to elevate animation as art…
Alternative/Forgotten Histories
Alosha and Claire (Part II)
by Giannalberto Bendazzi • September 21, 2020 • 1 Comment
When no film was in production, Alosha was busy engraving, while Claire was busy with the minutiae of daily housekeeping. Both read a lot. He knew Russian, French, German, and English. She knew English and French and had learned Russian…
Alosha and Claire (Part I)
by Giannalberto Bendazzi • September 14, 2020 • 0 Comments
I met Alexandre Alexeïeff at the Abano Terme Animation Festival (Italy) in the spring of 1971. He was standing in front of the cinema hall, solemn and gracious at the same time. I introduced myself and he greeted me warmly.…
Animation’s Uncharted Territories and the Archive Issue: The Tunisian Case
by Maya Ben Ayed • March 16, 2020 • 1 Comment
The absence of a memorial policy for animated films, in Tunisia and throughout Africa and the Middle East, is mainly explained by a lack of awareness of this art not only among the large audience but also among the insiders.…
Animation Archives: We’ve Got Your Back
by Chris Pallant • February 24, 2020 • 2 Comments
Archives are divine. They have the power to transport us back to a forgotten time; they can suggest, with tantalizing incompleteness, new revelations about a hitherto familiar subject; and they can bend, warp, break, and remake history. Archives are also…
Neglect and Omission: Irish Animation Archives
by Yvonne Hennessy • February 10, 2020 • 2 Comments
Ireland’s geographical position is an important factor to consider when taking into account the animation practices and techniques that were developing in both North America and Europe during the early-twentieth-century. Irish artists and filmmakers traveled widely for education and exhibition…
After Decades of Obscurity an Animation Legend Receives His Due
by J.J. Sedelmaier • March 5, 2018 • 0 Comments
Several years ago, I wrote an article for Print Magazine’s online blog Imprint about a book written by artist/cartoonist Edwin George “E.G.” Lutz – a 1920 manual titled Animated Cartoons – How They Are Made Their Origin and Development. According…
The Gendered Past of Animation: Exploring the Historiography of Women in Animation
by Bella Honess Roe • November 20, 2017 • 1 Comment
According to a 2015 Los Angeles Times article, the majority of animation production students in the US are female, yet they comprise less than a fifth of the workforce in creative roles in the American animation industry. This situation is…
Animation: A Different Way of Looking at the Past
by Victoria Walden • November 26, 2014 • 0 Comments
What do we mean by ‘history’? The term itself is much contested. History (with a capital ‘H’) is often reserved for ‘official histories’ of events, these are usually imbued with hegemonic priorities and neglect many voices that could contribute to…
Getting closer into the heart of the Thai Thai-ness
by Millie Young • November 26, 2014 • 2 Comments
To get closer into the heart of Thai-Thai-ness and as a continuation from ‘Tracing the Heart of Thai Animation’, which opened the discussion on Thai animation’s cultural identity and outlined the key feature films in their short history, this post…