Two Oregon animation artists, Rose Bond and Bill Plympton, are special guests at this year’s Animated Exeter festival in England. This post, from the Devon and Cornwall Film website, begins with a sarcastic comment from a film lover who obviously wanted to see things stay more local.
Because no South West artist covers injustice, class and punishment, Animated Exeter has asked internationally acclaimed US artist Rose Bond to create an animated light show highlighting the themes for her piece Broadsided, which will launch the event at Exeter Castle.
Broadsided will run at the Castle for three evenings from Thursday, February 11 to Saturday, February 13.
The festival, which started in 2000, includes workshops and exhibitions, as well as a careers fair for securing jobs in the industry plus master-classes from the Spielbergs of the animated world, including Bill Plympton and Aardman Animations. And an awards ceremony will showcase emerging talent, with awards given during the festival (and after, in the case of the British Animation Awards).
(Image: Broadsided! Exeter Castle Animation by US artist Rose Bond)
Not my job to boost Portland State, but it is true that both Rose Bond and Bill Plympton got their undergraduate degrees there – Bond in drawing and painting and Plympton in graphic design. Another Oregon filmmaker who attended Portland State at the same time as Plympton, but was inexplicably not invited to Animated Exeter 2010: producer Mike Richardson.
1 response so far ↓
1 Lee Morgan // Feb 2, 2010 at 3:11 am
Hi there
Thanks for mentioning the story.
Of course, our swipe wasn’t at the artist, but arts organisations – the publicly-funded bureaucracy surrounding events
As we said in one of the comments, the website Devon and Cornwall Film champions filmmakers in Devon and Cornwall, UK, and another of our sites – Arts+Culture – focuses on South West artists in the UK, and we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t raise issues to do with funding and profile at big events on our doorstep – a kind of cultural ’shop local’.
After running the story, an artist told us an old European, saying: “The prophet is unknown in their own land.”
It would be a dull existence if we weren’t able to experience and enjoy art and culture from throughout the world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bang the drum for those from your own backyard.
So, kudos to Oregon Movies! (And… er… Devon and Cornwall Film.)
(Oh, and if you know of any films with a Devon or Cornwall connection, please drop us a line!)
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