I may be the single worst and dumbest artist to have to tackle this subject, but bear with me.
I will defend animation to my dying breath, even if to an extent. But feature animation is such a precious medium to me, a medium that is widely mishandled and misinterpreted by industries and filmmakers alike and thus demands care and attention, as at its most remarkable, which very often is from outside the studio system, it more than live-action and at times more than short-form arts/entertainment feels like comfort food with practically no sudden pause. I myself take occasional interest in short films whenever I’m up to it, but it’s features that are my primary focus, because it’s twice as exciting to escape to a whole world conjured up by hundreds of incredible animators for an hour or longer, no less projected onto a giant screen. If a festival taking place as far from home as Dalston Kingsland curates an animated feature, that’s nearly always a priority for me. And yet, the world of animated cinema is so vast, and not even most people I know in the community outside of journalism can or want to see past the American products that are so easy for them to track down.
Of course, it’s easy to understand why: many independent and foreign films like the ones listed in this comic strip are hardly likely to play in their area, they’re often buried rock bottom within the depths of digital platforms even on their first day of availability, numerous countries including the UK* can’t even squeeze most of them into the theatrical window, and personally, what do I know? I can’t convince the entire mainstream public that they’ll adore the filmography of Pedro Costa as much as I do. International animation can’t appeal to everyone when it isn’t geared towards a wide, universal audience; Klaus is an Emperor’s New Groove esque comedy about a postman who ended up being Santa’s little helper, I Lost My Body is a French surrealist drama about a disillusioned stalker cutting off his hand that turns sentient and ends up trying to better himself after snapping a pigeon’s neck. Mainstream animation, whether it be western or Japanese, is generally easy to talk about and dissect every frame of, specifically easier to meme (sometimes even too easy to meme). But some fans have never logged a Ghibli film in their lives!
Not to mention, and I’m off on a kind of protest here, that beautifully traditionally/stop-motion/stylistically animated films from across the globe are receiving the theatrical treatment every year and yet it’ll usually only take an Oscar nomination for audiences with such a demand for something different to discover them (unless you’re I Lost My Body, even if you win the independent Annie). As addressed by The Royal Ocean Film Society in his video The Current State of Animation, 2018 saw 11 major studio releases in the United States and a whopping 32+ non-major/independent current releases (not mentioned in the video are Big Fish & Begonia, Liz and the Blue Bird and Tito and the Birds).
The major releases included Incredibles 2, Teen Titans Go! and Into the Spider-Verse, but while the minor slate was largely dominated by Japanese animation which boasts almost as broad a presence amongst the community if not equally, it brought more original, non-IP ideas to the table than the entire Hollywood slate. And given how Spider-Verse is arguably the best film of 2018 (and I’ve seen hundreds from that year), it’s hard not to just cherish a big league out of all of these. But just because the underdogs may be inferior and harder to have a humorous discussion about, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated like the antithesis to the Hollywood problem that they are and just not worth at least bringing up.
GKIDS, the latest distributor to hold the US rights to Studio Ghibli’s filmography, have been responsible for handling a good many of these minor releases, and no other distributor, not even Netflix, has committed so much so devotedly for the medium as a whole. They founded the Animation is Film Festival. They championed the best of their acquisitions to awards status and so often has it worked. They have the most inclusive library of animation of any independent distributor in the world. They’re the answer to all your quarrels. Browse their library and feel that inspiration kick in.
I wish not to sound stern or force readers to start watching and promoting animation they may not be interested in, but there are better ways to cherish the art form than fixating exclusively on how the cold brew at no point hits in Arctic Dogs or how Playmobil is deservedly Hollywood’s greatest loss since Coupon: The Movie. Animation is not just for kids, but if the familiar fare is all you’re concerned about, which is usually geared towards families, then I would leave the choice up to you, but if you’re also one of the most trusted sources for animation fandom and buzz on whatever social media platform you’re most hooked on and you claim animation to be your source of power, isn’t that also part of the problem?
Because by ignoring the expanded world of animated kino GKIDS is trying to introduce to you and talking about/paying for only the boss babies and the Sherlock Gnomeses, you’re refusing to expose an adventurous community to some of the most subversive, original animated films available right now. Search around for foreign and independent animation, buy/rent/stream what you can find. If that’s hard for you in your country, get yourself a American account on iTunes and buy a regional gift card. Keep a look out for festival screenings and releases in your area when it’s safe to go outside again. Follow outlets like Animation Magazine and *sigh* yes, even Cartoon Brew outside of Amid’s constant hate-spewing. Annecy has transferred the majority of their 2020 programme to streaming, and a world of animation in short and feature form will be at your fingertips for a €15 subscription! Support all good animation!
Mentioned in this comic are:
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018, Salvador Simó)
Ruben Brandt, Collector (2018, Milorad Krstić)
Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2015, Alberto Vázquez & Pedro Rivero)
Funan (2018, Denis Do)
I Lost My Body (2019, Jérémy Clapin)
The Swallows of Kabul (2018, Zabou Breitman & Eléa Gobé Mévellec)
Tito and the Birds (2018, Gabriel Bitar, André Catoto & Gustavo Steinberg)
Bombay Rose (2019, Gitanjali Rao)
Away (2019, Gints Zilbalodis)
Torrey Pines (2016, Clyde Petersen)
The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily (2019, Lorenzo Mattotti)
*This brings me to the sort of exposure independent feature animation gets where I live, which only adds to the frustration. The UK has suspicious lack of a market for alternative animation beyond festivals and the bottom of the VOD bin. No matter what the issue, and unless they are Have a Nice Day (MUBI) or Tehran Taboo (Peccadillo), no company here is as daring as GKIDS or Shout to champion independent animated cinema that is not Japanese or geared towards children in the whimsical sense, or at all, not even on demand. Not even StudioCanal, beyond giving light to, as far as foreign-language films are concerned, the work of Benjamin Renner. Helping less is the sudden disinterest taken by Soda Pictures, which used to be the last hope we had, bringing to our shores Mary and Max, Tatsumi and Tales of the Night, even hosting a special children’s club that brought Rémi Chayé’s Long Way North (a must-watch with Chayé’s new Calamity Jane film on the horizon) to cinemas that wouldn’t have any other excuse to play it before stopping at My Life as a Courgette and folding into Thunderbird.
Curzon Home Cinema and Ourscreen included the mesmerising Coco alternative The Day of the Crows in their libraries for a brief period, but for years since I thought I’d never come across it again until discovering it on little-known VOD service FilmDoo, accessible everywhere in the world but North America. Heck, not even an Oscar nomination could convince any UK distributor to pick up Boy & the World even after it screened at the Barbican a year before the campaign began. If not for Netflix and their UK theatrical deal, I Lost My Body would be another part of the problem, which is saying so much since this is as fantastical and artful and complex as you can get with many of the features that have a hard time trying to capture the attention of UK buyers.
If you live in the UK and you’re having the same problem as I, then search far and wide; check film festivals when cinemas are open again or even online to see if they are screening anything animated. As a resident nearby London, I will always go for the animated features selected for the London Film Festival, I attend the London International Animation Festival every year usually for the occasional feature (I had to travel as far as Dalston Kingsland to see last year’s most staggering cinematic solo act Away and Japan’s one-hour oddball On-Gaku: Our Sound), and Ciné Lumière is more keen on screening European animation than any other cinema in the country. Don’t be stick guy. Explore away!
