Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide December 1978

About Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

The Toronto International Film Festival is officially back! Also known as TIFF, is one of Canada’s and the world’s largest and well known film festivals. Located in downtown Toronto, the festival welcomes many filmmakers from around the world to show off their skills and talents.

These are the animated shorts and films that were shown during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for this 2021.

Angakusajuajug – The Shaman’s Apprentice

Director: Zacharias Kunuk
CANADA
21 minutes

About: A young shaman must face her first test-a trip underground to visit Kannaaluk, The One Below, who holds the answers to why a community member has become ill.

Anxious Body

Director: Yoriko Mizushiri
France, Japan
6 minutes

About: Living things, artificial things, geometry shapes, and lines. When these different things encounter, a new direction is born.

Boobs

Director: Marie Valade
Canada
8 minutes

About: A young woman drawn in ink is forced to deal with paper breasts appearing on her chest. She must quickly come to terms with these new strange things.

Charlotte

Director: Eric Warin, Tahir Rana
Canada, France, Belgium
92 minutes

About:

An account of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon living in the south of France between 1941 and 1943.

Charlotte

Director: Zach Dorn
United States
13 minutes

About: A pop song transforms the lives of a folk singer and her family. 

DUST BATH

Director: Seth A Smith
Canada
2 minutes

About: A disquieting tale of a humble rooster facing the great questions of existence.

I Gotta Look Good for the Apocalypse

Director: Ayce Kartal
France
6 minutes

About: March 2020. After China, the whole planet locks itself in. Our world, which we call real, is drained of what used to be its substance, and forms of digital life multiply, like these couples whose avatars share a common life in a virtual universe. But what if the crisis we are actually experiencing is not a pandemic, but an accelerated derealization of our lives?

Inu-Oh

Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Japan, China
98 minutes

About: Two boys marginalized by society in 14th-century Japan find power through dance and song, in Masaaki Yuasa’s animated tale about a disturbing curse.

Love, Dad

Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen
Czech Republica, Slovakia
12 minutes

About: A short film about ties and gaps between a child and a parent. The author rediscovers letters her dad used to write her from prison. That love seems to be gone now. She decides to write back in hope to find the connection again. She puts in writing what could not be said: blaming him for family’s break-up but also trying to understand.

Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics

Director: Terril Calder
Canada
20 minutes

About: A stop-motion animation that charts a challenging journey for Baby Girl, a precocious Métis girl contemplating her path to Hell.

Soft Animals

Director: Renee Zhan
United Kingdom
3 minutes

About: Two ex-lovers bump into each other at a train station.

In communities throughout Switzerland’s Appenzell Hinterland and Midland regions, a unique tradition with enigmatic origins unfolds around the New Year. Known as Silvesterchlausen, the custom entails a group of boys and men who don remarkable, handmade costumes with masks and headdresses that represent rural, wild, and natural scenes.

“Silvesterchlausen,” a dreamy short film by writer and director Andrew Norman Wilson, highlights this regional seasonal event, which occurs on December 31 and January 13. The first date marks the turn of the new year on the Gregorian calendar, while January 13 denotes the same on the Julian calendar. The ornately dressed mummers, in groups of six, polyphonically yodel and ring bells. “The ritual has been performed for at least 500 years, but nobody knows how or why it began,” Wilson says.

Some of the performers’ headwear resembles miniature parade floats, while otherworldly designs made from pinecones, mosses, grasses, and other organic items make some of them appear as though they have emerged directly from the earth. In small, tight-knit municipalities, the tradition is a rare instance of relative anonymity, as familiar residents disappear behind meticulously crafted garments.

The performers, known as Chläuse, practice diligently for a month or so before the event, creating something of a “Chläus fever.” Boys form the groups and “continue throughout their lives until the members are too old to withstand the physical toll of the 18-hour days,” Wilson says, sharing that the participants build significant bonds.

As New Year’s Eve arrives, the mummers connect houses with a red string, literally and figuratively stitching connections within the community. Then, as the Chläuse move through villages and visit homes, local residents provide mulled wine to keep their bodies warm and spirits high.

See the film on Vimeo, and find more of Wilson’s work on Instagram. If you’re in the Upper Midwest, you can experience a taste of this annual tradition in New Glarus, Wisconsin. You might also enjoy Ashley Suszczynski’s incredible and mysterious photographs exploring European masking rituals.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A Short Film Joins the Timeless Swiss Masked Tradition of Silvesterchlausen appeared first on Colossal.

hedleywrightphotography posted a photo:

National Geographic's new documentary film, "Time and Water," grapples with a challenging, profound question: How do you say goodbye to what you never thought you could lose? Through archival footage, photos, art, and science, Academy Award-nominated director Sara Dosa follows acclaimed Icelandic writer and poet Andri Snær Magnason as he confronts the death of his country's glaciers, the loss of his grandparents, and the kind of world he hopes future generations can experience. The story's next chapters are being written at this very second.

[Read More]

CamShaw74 posted a photo:

Event: Foxfield General Classics
Location: Foxfield Railway, Blythe Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent
Camera: Canon AE-1 Program
Lens(s): Canon FD 35mm f/2.8
Film: Agfa Vista 200 - Expired 2017
Shot ISO: 125
Light Meter: Camera
Exposure: Mostly f/2.8 or f/4
Lighting: Overcast & Drizzle
Mounting: Hand-held
Firing: Shutter button
Developer: Bellini C-41 Kit
Scanner: Epson V800
Post: Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop (dust removal)

Jason Mitcham’s childhood home in Greensboro, North Carolina, is no longer standing. In 2011, the local government seized the house and the land he grew up on via eminent domain to widen what was then High Point Road into what’s now Gate City Boulevard. Mitcham last saw the site in 2023, when a paved highway blanketed where the neighborhood once stood, and fragments of garages and barns still marked the landscape.

To memorialize this beloved landmark, Mitcham hand-painted “Ever Behind the Sunset,” a touching stop-motion film that combines a series of expressive compositions with audio from the artist’s mother and his own home videos taken throughout the 1980s. Panels of thick, gestural brushstrokes animate a story of loss, grief, and remembrance as if viewed through a dreamlike haze.

Mitcham shares that the film reflects a series of compounding devastations, both personal and local: “the collapse of my father’s civil engineering and land-surveying firm after the 2008 housing crisis, my parents’ bankruptcy, his death, followed by my mother’s, and the community’s fight against the commercial development that would permanently alter their neighborhood.”

It’s worth watching the behind-the-scenes video that shares more of the artist’s process and thinking. Explore an archive of his films and works on canvas on his website and Instagram. You might also like the paintings of Jeremy Miranda.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Painted by Hand, a Stop-Motion Film Eulogizes a Lost Childhood Home appeared first on Colossal.

Truus, Bob & Jan too! posted a photo:

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2113. Photo: Warner Bros.

Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. She was a film and television star, known throughout her 60-year career as a consummate, versatile professional with a strong, realistic screen presence. By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She was a favourite of her directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood before turning to television.

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in 1907 in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens, a bricklayer. Her mother died when she was accidentally knocked off a trolley by a drunk. Her father abandoned his children in grief after the death of his wife. Her elder sister brought up Barbara and was partially raised in foster homes. Later, she went to work at the local telephone company, but she had the urge to enter show business. At seventeen, she went to work as a showgirl. In 1928, Barbara moved to Hollywood and proved to be an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. Barbara was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Forbidden (Frank Capra, 1932) and Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), to thrillers, such as Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), also starring Fred MacMurray. She excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940) and The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) and in Westerns, such as Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille, 1939).

Barbara Stanwyck was also well known for her TV roles as Victoria, the matriarch of the Barkley family in the Western series The Big Valley (1965). In 1983, she also played in the hit mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983), which did much to keep her in the public eye. She turned in an outstanding performance as Mary Carson. One of her last roles was in the hit drama series The Colbys (1985). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times, for Stella Dallas (1937), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). For her television work, she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), The Big Valley (1966) and The Thorn Birds (1983). Her performance in The Thorn Birds also won her a Golden Globe. She received an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986. She was also the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the American Film Institute (1987), the Film Society of Lincoln Centre (1986), the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1981) and the Screen Actors Guild (1967). Barbara Stanwyck died in 1990, leaving 93 films and a host of TV appearances as her legacy. She was married twice, to film actors Frank Fay (1928-1935) and Robert Taylor (1939-1952). Her son, Dion Anthony 'Tony' Fay (1932), was adopted. Frank Fay and Stanwyck's marriage and their experience in Hollywood later became the basis of the Hollywood film A Star is Born. Their stormy marriage finally ended after a drunken brawl, during which he tossed their adopted son, Dion, into the swimming pool. Despite rumours of affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, Stanwyck wed Robert Taylor, who had gay rumours of his own to dispel. Their marriage started on a sour note when his possessive mother demanded he spend his wedding night with her rather than with Barbara. In 1957, Tony, her adopted son, was arrested for trying to sell lewd pictures while waiting to cash his unemployment check. When questioned by the press about his famous mother, he replied, "We don't speak". She saw him only a few times after his childhood.

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Mr. Greenjeans posted a photo:

Love the heavenly scent that lingers in the Spring air...instant peace.

HSS... :)

About ANIMAFILM International Animation Festival

The festival shows dozens of foreign and local animated films for children and adults for five days in September. The goal of the festival is to promote art and animation in Azerbaijan. Over 200 animated films from 40 countries were screened. The theme of the festival was dedicated to people with disabilities.

The winners of International Competition – Best Animated FIlm and Short

The Knight and the Princess – Best Animated Feature Film

About: A young, idealistic adventurer who plans to rescue the wives and children of deceased sea merchants that have been taken prisoner by pirates and King Daher the Great of Sindh.

Interesting Facts:

• One of Egypts first Animated Feature Film, that has been 20 years in the making.
• An all-Arab cast and film crew.
• Eight Musical Numbers are included.

Kitchen by Measure – Best Animated Short Film

About: The story explores gender roles of the past and how they are surprisingly relevant still to this day.

Interesting Facts:

• 10 minute stop motion short.
• The film is based on a short story by legendary Icelandic author, Svava Jakobsdóttir.
• Featured on the Icelandic Film Centre.

D_M_J posted a photo:

Some more film shots from around the paddock at VSCC Curborough, and what a great way to start the speed season! Love the relaxed atmosphere at this event and one of my favourite paddocks to photograph too.

Decided to only shoot black and white on the day, mostly with the Hasselblad but there will be some much older camera stuff to come too...

Camera // Hasselblad 500CM
Film // Ilford FP4
Developer // Ilfotec HC (B)
Scan // Camera scan