#life animated

[sundancearchives]

Longtime alum Roger Ross Williams’ new documentary tells the rich history of the Apollo Theater in Harlem – The Apollo is available to stream for free in April on HBO. 

“It’s 85 years of the history of black music and black entertainment in this country. We used music and art to lift ourselves out of oppression.”  - Roger Ross Williams

Williams received a 2011 Sundance Documentary Fund Grant for his first feature length documentary God Loves Uganda, attended the Documentary Edit and Story Lab with the film in 2012, and premiered it during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Life, Animated, Roger Ross Williams’ second feature documentary, premiered at the 2016 Festival and won the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary.

Most recently Roger Ross Williams attended the 2019 Sundance Film Festival with Traveling While Black, an installation and VR experience at New Frontier.

Stream The Apollo on HBO and check out the trailer below:

Photo of Roger Ross Williams during the Sundance Film Festival premiere of Life, Animated. © 2016 Sundance Institute | Photo by Jonathan Hickerson

[deanimej]

About three years ago, I was contacted by The Affinity Project, a company that specializes in Autism research, to create four new characters for a new mobile application called Sidekicks. Sidekicks helps children with Autism build better social skills. The child can speak to an animated character on their phone. The character will be the child's "Sidekick" and will be able to interact with them. In reality, the Sidekick will be controlled by a parent with another smartphone. The interactions between the child and parent through the Sidekick can help build a better connection and understanding for both. Originally the placeholder Sidekick avatars were just slightly modified pictures of Teen Titan and Ben 10 characters.

Obviously, they needed to be characters that were not under copyright and could make more than 3 expressions. They wanted characters loosely based on Glen Murakami's style, so that's where I came in!  

I was tasked with creating three, later four, original characters for children to interact with. I started off with a boy and girl character... Griff and Jaze respectfully. They needed to look somewhere between the ages of 10-17, as that was the audience the app was aimed at. Also, because the interface the programmers used to put together the Sidekicks application is sort of limited, there were only so many frames the program could process. This is why the space in between animation frames are so big. Every frame needed to count.

It fills my heart up with pride and joy that my little characters help kids be able to better connect with others and express themselves. I’m so glad I had a small hand in that. You can currently download the Sidekicks app from the Apple Store! Or if you want to learn more about The Affinity Project and the Sidekicks app’s origins, please visit the Official Sidekicks Website!

[onceuponawildflower]

Life, Animated is a stellar documentary. Please watch it if you have 1-2 hours to spare.

[netbug009]

I tried to watch “Life, Animated” today. I couldn’t finish it.

The movie was great when its star, Owen, was actually allowed to speak for himself. But his parents started to make me feel sick. Examples include: - Calling ADHD and Dyslexia "more manageable" than autism.  - Implying Owen “became” autistic during the time he was nonverbal, and treating autism as a shell he was trapped in that movies brought him out of. Constantly implying non-verbal autistics are automatically less intelligent.  - "I didn't know what autism was, I just knew it made Owen the way he was."  - The parents talking, as if Owen will never be able to see this movie, saying they don’t expect him to ever do college or really function as an adult. Nobody asks him what he thinks of this.  I just... do people without autism even really TRY to understand?? Is it just that impossible to understand unless you experience it? It doesn’t feel like people actually put in the effort to understand... all while acting like it’s autistic people who can’t think very well or empathize...  I mean, I’m not trying to generalize all neurotypical people, but I haven’t seen anybody else do anything but praise this movie?? I’m not angry if it’s a “you have to have it or you won’t get it” thing but I wish people would stop pretending to be experts.  I’m more than a little irritated. 

[yeswecancan]

Films in 2017 #16 Life, Animated, 2016. Directed by Roger Ross Williams ★★★★★★ - - - -

[animationforce]

Animated Films’ 2017 Oscar Nominations

Best Documentary Feature

Fire At Sea

I am Not Your Negro

Life, Animated

OJ: Made in America

13th

Life, Animated (all film stills via Oscar.com)

Best Visual Effects

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Jungle Book

Doctor Strange

Kubo and the Two Strings* 

Deepwater Horizon

Kubo and the Two Strings

Original Song

“Audition (The Fools who Dream)” — La La Land

“Can’t Stop This Feeling” – Trolls

“City of Stars” — La La Land

“How Far I’ll Go” – Moana

“The Empty Chair” — Jim: The James Foley Story 

Trolls

Animated Feaure

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

My Life as a Zucchini

The Red Turtle

Zootopia

Moana

Animated Short

Blind Vaysha

Borrowed Time

Pear Cider and Cigarettes

Pearl

Piper

Borrowed Time

Reminder: animated films are not eligible for “Best Director” nominations, thought they could have been nominated in other categories like “Best (Original/Adapated) Screenplay” (Inside Out) or even “Best Picture” (Beauty and the Beast). 

* While all the VFX nominees have some animation in them to have been nominated, Kubo and the Two Strings has become just the second completely animated film to be nominated in the visual effects category, behind 1993′s Nightmare Before Christmas, according to Variety.com.

[UPDATED 1/24 at 9:23 a.m. ET — Oscar.com originally listed eight nominees in the Visual Effects category. There are only five nominees, so the list has been thus updated]

- Courtney (harmonicacave)

[redandfranticfeelings]

so there was a documentary about an autistic person using animated movies to better understand the world and nobody thought to tell me about this??