The Sea Slug Animation Competition, the latest Seattle movie competition whose adorably named “larval version” runs from March 7–8 on the SIFF Cinema Uptown, is constructing itself round neighborhood—particularly, the huge neighborhood of gifted impartial native animators who name the Pacific Northwest dwelling. Within the phrases of Sea Slug co-founder Hannah Baek, it’s about sending up a “bat sign” for these animators plus those that love their work to return collectively to have a good time the assorted kinds and construct bonds round them.
“We’re making an attempt to construct solidarity, neighborhood, sustainability, and entry,” Baek says. “A part of the entry is making an attempt to get folks collectively to allow them to share work, share tasks.” This sentiment is echoed by Sea Slug co-founder Rhys Iliakis, who additionally helped work on the pleasant trailer for the competition. “We’re not doing a transfer quick and break issues, we’re doing a transfer quick and meet folks and construct issues.”
Passes to attend are $40 (with a $20 value for college kids) and offers entry to all screenings. There are additionally particular person tickets out there, however Baek says that the easiest way to assist Sea Slug as they proceed rising is with a move. There may even be an artist alley and probabilities to attach with animators.
For his or her first yr, tasks embrace the Seattle premiere of the surreal, star-studded coming-of-age movie Boys Go to Jupiter, which can embrace a digital Q&A with author/director Julian Glander, and a closing evening retrospective screening of the 1976 animated fantasy characteristic movie of Allegro non troppo, which is described as being “a raunchy and barely seen spoof of Disney’s Fantasia.” There’s additionally the stop-motion brief Les Bêtes from Michael Granberry—an space animator who has labored on a wide range of vibrant tasks resembling Anomalisa, Wendell & Wild, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and the title sequence from the sequence Severance—in addition to the experimental brief Gimlet from longtime Washington animator Ruth Hayes.
Hayes, along with being a director and animator, was a professor at Evergreen State Faculty and likewise co-wrote the 1998 article “Northwest Animation: The Roots of Artistic Variance” about how the area had develop into a hub for animation, tracing again this progress over many a long time. She says Sea Slug, whereas nonetheless rising, is a superb improvement for native impartial animators because it brings audiences to shorts like hers.
“It’s uncommon for a movie like Gimlet to be in an animation competition as a result of typical animation festivals are often very character-driven and story-oriented. Gimlet will not be,” says Hayes. “It’s extra experiential and nearly me making an attempt to determine the way to make a movie out of this kind of materials.” (Gimlet was made utilizing a method often known as the phytogram methodology—utilizing the inner chemistry of vegetation to create pictures on photographic emulsion—and has no narrative to talk of.)
Hayes additionally factors to the worth of a competition like Sea Slug highlighting the impartial work occurring exterior of the larger manufacturing cities, and displaying audiences every little thing else that’s on the market to find. “The give attention to native work is actually essential as a result of persons are so used to watching work that comes from elsewhere, and [having] this concept that the actually essential media manufacturing on this nation solely occurs in Los Angeles or New York. And it doesn’t, there’s a whole lot of impartial media happening all over, and there’s a lot of experimental media happening all over too,” says Hayes. “So these smaller festivals that foreground that form of work are actually invaluable as a result of folks get the concept, ‘Oh, that is form of accessible! I may make this work myself, I may attempt to animate or see what sorts of image-making I can work with.’ It is a actually great point and it ought to occur extra usually.”
Hayes says that native festivals with screenings of smaller movies are vital and used to happen much more usually, however that the as soon as thriving locations the place you would see some of these movies (like Seattle’s native arthouse theaters) are more and more struggling, and even closing, leaving “slim” choices for audiences. Nonetheless, Hayes says that festivals like Sea Slug and their future give her hope all will not be misplaced with native cinema.
“We’ve got a whole lot of actually nice work popping out of the Pacific Northwest and that’s value celebrating! So I feel a competition like Sea Slug might help do this. It’s undoubtedly serving to to place native work within the context of a a lot greater area, and displaying that native work can present up nicely with work that’s famend.”
The Sea Slug Animation Competition runs March 7–8 at SIFF Cinema Uptown.
