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by Seth Rogovoy
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Aug. 22, 1996 -- Bugs Bunny, the California Raisins, "The Lion King," Gumby and "Toy Story" -- all are examples of animation, the genre of motion picture which brings life and movement to non-living, inanimate objects.
They are also examples of why animation is one of the most widely misunderstood of all modern art forms. When it takes the form of children's cartoons or commercial entertainment, animation is incredibly popular. But animation of any other sort is virtually invisible.
Other than for a 10-second acknowledgment of their existence on the annual Academy Awards broadcast, hundreds if not thousands of independent animators around the world labor in near total obscurity, making films that few if any will ever see. It's an ironic situation, as animators work in one of the most popular media in history -- one of the first art forms that the vast majority of people in the developed world are repeatedly exposed to, and one that by its very essence demands to be shown to audiences. Yet not only are there no audiences for their creations -- there aren't even any venues or means to distribute their films.
In spite of this dire situation, animators persevere -- many of them, anyway -- laboring away by hand at their films, frame by frame -- at least a dozen and up to two-dozen per second of film -- making their drawings or pen-and-ink sketches or stop-motion models, all just to satisfy their own muse and perhaps a few kindred souls who share their passion.
"You have to like the process itself, because there's no immediate gratification," says Janie Goldenberg, an independent animator who lives in Richmond. "But we do something that everyone can relate to, because I don't know anyone who didn't sit in a classroom somewhere and draw pictures on the side of their textbooks and make flip books. Everybody's done that, so everybody has animated."
In part driven by the belief that everyone can relate, in part fired by a missionary-like zeal to spread the word, Goldenberg has been curating an annual animation festival for the Interlaken School of Art in Stockbridge the last few years.
This year's festival, the third, takes place this weekend, Friday through Sunday, in Room K111, the "Small Theater," at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield. Tickets are $10; children under 12 are $5. Shows are at 8:30 on Friday and Saturday, and 8 on Sunday. Call 298-5252 for more information or to purchase tickets in advance.
The annual animation festival gives Goldenberg the chance to showcase many of her favorite animated films from recent years. "I get to say, `Hey, everybody, look at these films, aren't they really neat?'^" said Goldenberg. "I show independent films from all over the world, with lots of different subject matter. Some are really serious, some are really funny, some are aesthetically beautiful. Basically, I'm playing catch-up with everybody and showing them what great independent animation is. It's an amazing art form."
Goldenberg draws a distinction between independent and commercial animation. The latter is created within the Hollywood studio system -- Disney films and children's cartoons on TV are two obvious examples -- while the former are the products of independent artists who for the most part work alone with little or no outside financing. Thus, the end product is as much the realization of their personal vision as a painting or a sculpture is to their makers. When the credits roll at the end of a typical, independently-produced, animated film, "It doesn't take too long because there aren't a whole lot of people working on them," said Goldenberg.
These days, most commercial animators rely in large part on computers to generate the thousands of individual frames that make up an animated film. Most independent animators, however, still rely exclusively on their own hands to create the images that go into their films.
"Everything I show in the festival is done by hand," said Goldenberg. "There's a whole bunch of dinosaurs that are still out there, and I'm one of them. It smells like paint. It's done by hand, which is I think what connects it to Interlaken, being an art school. It's about the process."
That process varies greatly. Animators use pastel on paper, pen- and-ink drawings, ink on glass, sand on glass, paper cut-outs and the clay figures familiar to many from Gumby and the California Raisins. Then there are what Goldenberg termed "classic, cell-type films" that use inking and painting -- the method she prefers -- wherein pencil drawings on paper are traced in ink onto clear, acetate sheets, or cells, and then painted.
The variety of subject matter in animation is even greater. There is nothing inherently childish or cartoon-like about animation, and funny cartoons are just the tip of the iceberg -- albeit as with icebergs, the tip is the only part most people ever see.
This year's festival, which will include about a dozen films viewed in two 45-minute sets, ranges the gamut. "Evolutionary Fantasy: Ravel's `Bolero,'" by the Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, is part of a longer spoof of the classic animated film "Fantasia." A film by John Schnall of the U.S. called "I Was a Thanksgiving Turkey" is just what the title suggests: a view of the autumn feast from the point of view of the unfortunate guest of honor. The Netherland's Paul Driessen will be represented by "Spotting a Cow," which Goldenberg calls funny and irreverent.
On the more serious side is "Every Child," a film by the Canadian Derek Lamb about an unwanted child. Canada is fertile ground for independent animation, said Goldenberg, because the National Film Board of Canada is very supportive of the genre. "Crac," by Frederick Back, also Canadian, won an Academy Award in 1981. The film follows the history of a family through a rocking chair, from when the wood was still a tree through its manufacture and purchase and use by the family. At 15 minutes, "Crac" is the longest film in the festival. Most are just a few minutes long.
"I have tried to put together a very broad range of films in terms of media and subject matter," said Goldenberg. Unlike the handful of annual, international animation festivals, Goldenberg isn't limited to previewing new or cutting-edge films, and so she draws on the best of the last 15 years. "Here in the Berkshires where we don't have access to it ordinarily, it's really nice to show as broad a range as possible," she said. "I feel like I'm still teaching Intro to Animation. We're now on Intro to Animation 3."
If there's any theme to the festival, said Goldenberg, "It's to look at how much different stuff there is, and how many different ways there are of telling a story and showing art. There's animation that doesn't really have a story to it, that's almost like a moving painting, that's just beautiful to look at. There's animation where the technique is not what it's about but the writing is."
Goldenberg almost wound up far afield from animation. Toward the end of her undergraduate studies at Brandeis University she was taking the law boards and was planning on going to law school. "I had finished all my requirements except my honors thesis, so I decided to take a film class, and I made an animated film," she said. "While I was working on it I thought making films was fabulous, and I decided I wasn't going to law school."
After graduation in 1981, she returned to her native New York City and worked for a few years in the film industry before attending film school at New York University.
With half a dozen films under her belt, Goldenberg is on hiatus from filmmaking. She moved to the Berkshires five years ago from New York, preferring to raise her two children here rather than in the city. She is on the board of directors at Interlaken and she serves as president of the Rape Crisis Center of Berkshire County. She continues to exercise her artistic muscles via her work as a decorative painter. But her passion remains animation.
"I'll draw this or I'll draw that and I'll shoot it, and then it does something else," she said. "It takes on a life of its own, which is really incredible. It's got this real, like, `oh, wow' quality about it. It does have a life of its own. It's amazing."
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