Last year, Studio Ghibli’s producer, Yoshiaki Nishimura, caused something of a stir when he stated that whether or not Ghibli would hire a female director would depend on the type of film it would be produced. He stated: “Women tend…
While Sandra Lahire (1950-2001) is best known for her live action films, prior to 1986 she was working primarily with animation. These early works have received little attention, possibly because of their experimental approach and difficult subject matter. Throughout her…
In the seminal study of Weimar cinema, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German film (1947), Siegfried Kracauer offers an intriguing tribute to Lotte Reiniger, the pioneering filmmaker best known today for directing the earliest surviving animated feature,…
One of the most durable images that recurs throughout critical histories of Classical Hollywood is the studio system’s evocation of factory principles of corporate standardization. Writing in 1927, William A. Johnston argued that “from manufacturer to consumer it [cinema] functions…
It is now five years since animation artist Don Hertzfeldt released his tragicomedy feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012), which brings together his three short films Everything Will Be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008) and the 2011…
Netflix’s BoJack Horseman is many things: an amazing cartoon world where humans and anthropomorphic animals live in cohabitation; a pun-filled comedy that satirizes Hollywood culture; a sobering exploration of nihilism and depression. However, what distinguishes it from traditional animated sitcoms…
Animated sitcoms have a complex relationship with time. These are worlds where a character can remain 10 years old from 1989 to nowadays (as is the case for Bart Simpson in The Simpsons), a pregnancy can last seven television seasons…
As I write, the nineteenth iteration of the Taipei Film Festival winds to a close in three cinemas across the city. By and large the festival is an “international” affair, with omnipresent advertisements promising films from over 40 different countries,…
Life is a new series of science fiction animations that, by means of 3D images and psytrance electronic music, creates a new world of technology and imagination. Incorporating ideas from the hard and social sciences – such as astrophysics, constructal physics,…
While discussing the movie poster for Disney’s latest (live-action) rendition of Beauty and the Beast (2017, by Bill Condon) as an introduction to semiotics in a first-year university screen studies course, I was struck by the number of young adults…
