Puppets on Film at the Little Angel Theatre
25 – 27 March 2011
Reel Islington joined up with the Little Angel Theatre in Islington to create a fantastic mini-festival dedicated to the art of puppetry on film. This was the UK’s first film festival ever devoted entirely to the art of puppetry. The event was a great success and we hope to repeat it in 2013 initiating a regular biannual festival. We want to develop it further; to make more contacts with filmmakers and source more films from around the world, engage with cultural groups, embassies and academic institutions, develop partnerships for further funding and screening opportunities, and generally to make it an even better and more exciting event. We will keep you posted…
We would especially like to thank Peter Glanville, Artistic Director at the Little Angel for saying ‘Yes!’ to the idea and to all the wonderful staff at the theatre who managed the transition from theatre to cinema brilliantly!
The weekend hosted a fantastic selection of exciting puppet films, old and new, fiction and documentary, for both adults and children. Events and screenings included 4 controversial puppet films on the first night from Finland, USA and Holland, ‘The Music of Regret’ with Meryl Streep and a cast of puppets, ’Paper Cinema‘ performing their new work ‘Rock Charmer’ with a workshop to follow, the exquisite ‘Book of the Dead’ by the late great puppet animator Kihachiro Kawamoto, a Puppet Shorts competition with some fantastic entries, a rare screening of 80’s cult classic ‘Labyrinth’ followed by a Q & A with the legendary Brian Froud and puppeteers involved in the film, and a closing night screening of the UK premiere of ‘Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy’ – a wonderful film by the great puppeteer Roman Paska who joined us from the USA for a wonderful Q& A session afterwards.
Congratulations to the joint winners of ‘Best Puppet Short Film’; ‘NOESIS’, directed by Sophie Klevenow and ‘THE TREE MAN’, directed by Navin Dev. The judges felt strongly both films deserved credit and so awarded this joint prize. Congratulations also to Audience Award winner ‘DAMAGED GOODS’, directed by Barnaby Barford.
Many thanks to our judges; Roman Paska from New York, Cariad Astles from Central School of Speech and Drama and Dr Dan North from University of Exeter.
On Sunday afternoon we screened Lotte Reiniger’s ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’ accompanied by Sawcestra. Sawcestra are an orchestra of musicians who specialise in playing unusual instruments including musical saws, children’s toys and found objects that create sounds. The audience play along, choosing instruments from a box by the door, creating a spontaneous new soundtrack to the film.
We had some great feedback. Many thanks to everyone who took time to fill in the forms and to those of you who also made some suggestions for next time. Comments included:
“Most fun I’ve had in ages…”, “Excellent – although the children were better than us.”, “The film is a masterpiece – and the Q & A was very insightful”, “The theatre: old cosy seats, very homemade seating, great volume, tuning, courtesy of hospitality, fab and friendly”, “The film was beautiful and it was wonderful to take part in the soundtrack”, “Being able to join in…”, “The mix of style and medium… and budget!”, “Variety”, “Fast-paced, lots of different types of puppetry”, “Very high standard of films”, “…very stimulating and moving”, “absolutely loved the range”, “fabulous”, “local event”, “pick mine next time… haha, loved it overall”, “keep this going. It’s a great event” “Please keep doing this. It’s needed.”, “More!”, “Amazing – first time I’ve seen puppet films like this”
You can also read an excellent blog article written by Tony Sinnett, the man who made and controlled the puppets in the Joint Best Puppet Short Film winner ‘Tree Man’ – about the event.
