Artists Featured in Animation Show of Shows

October 18, 2015

Last Thursday, Ron Diamond hosted his annual Animation Show of Shows at DreamWorks Animation to a packed house of animators, and moderated a short Q&A with four of the filmmakers.

With puppets in hand and ready to share their experiences, the Q&A included John Lewis (Australia), Janette Goodey (New Zealand, but currently working in Australia), Isabelle Favez (Switzerland) and Nina Gantz (Netherlands).

(L to R): John Lewis, Janette Goodey, Ron Diamond, Isabelle Favez and Nina Gantz

The session was only 4 minutes, but immediately afterwards the discussion was continued in the lobby of DreamWorks’ Campanile Theater to give attendees an opportunity to view the puppets up close and in a more intimate setting. To the delight of the crowds, the filmmakers discussed the challenges of making independent short films, how they balanced their time in the studio with their personal lives, and how they were able to channel their passions into film making.

What’s in The Animation Show of Shows
Slightly different from the theatrical release now playing around the country, this industry screening was a bit more adult than the theatrical version. Additional films you will not see in theaters are Edmond by Nina Gantz (UK/The Netherlands), Yul and the Snake by Gabriel Harel (France) and Sanjay’s Super Team by Sanjay Patel (USA).

The theatrical version included the following shorts that are currently being screened across the US. In “The Story of Percival Pilts,” Janette Goodey and John Lewis capture the awkward balances of a stilt-walker via stop-motion animation. Lynn Tomlinson’s “The Ballad of Holland Island House” features beautiful visuals of a building foundering in the waves of the Chesapeake Bay. In “Stripy” from Iran, brothers Babak Nekooei and Behnoud Nekooei show a quietly rebellious worker decorating his assembly line products with scarlet calligraphic lines, upsetting the order of a gray, rectilinear factory. “We Can’t Live Without Cosmos” by Konstantin Bronzit, is a story about two cosmonauts n the old Soviet Union and how their life-long friendship endures through the riggers of training for flight. “Love in the Time of March Madness” by Americans Melissa Johnson and Robertino Zambrano, follows the travails of a 6-foot-4 female basketball player.

The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling selection of the year’s best animated short films, curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder, Ron Diamond. It began in 1998 with the aim of showing the most original, funny, intelligent short animated films from all over the world and presenting them at the major animation studios in order to inspire their animators and directors.