The Active Line: A Brief History of Film Animation

Motion picture animation has a long and distinguished history, sadly overshadowed by second-rate, mass-produced children’s cartoon entertainment. This 8-week survey of feature films and selected shorts attempts to place animation in its proper context in the history of the cinema. In additon, there will be three special presentations: an illustrated lecture on animation, a screening of local animators’ works and an introduction to the commercial animation industry in the Maritimes.

Portrait of the Artist

1 June: Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol

Chuck Workman, USA, 1991, 87 minutes. Hands down the best and most entertaining documentary on the great American Pop artist, this film collects testimonials from Warhol’s oddball relatives, his associates in the Factory demimonde, and even a Campbell’s Soup spokesman, in an attempt to unravel the mystery behind Warhol’s sphinx-like visage.

8 June: Basquiat

Two by Two: Breakthrough and follow-up films by Black directors Charles Burnett and Kasi Lemmons

In the 1990s African-American Cinema flourished in the wake of directors such as Spike Lee and John Singleton, filmmakers whose work reflected an urban and often aggressive outlook. However, two accomplished Black cineastes, Charles Burnett and Kasi Lemmons, made breakthrough films in the 1990s that suggested an original and less rhetorical direction for African-American Cinema. Two of their films, Burnett's To Sleep With Anger and Lemmons' Eve's Bayou, have become established landmarks.

Jean Cocteau: Trans-Genre Genius

The 20th Century French poet, filmmaker, artist, playwright, theatre designer and gay gadfly Jean Cocteau was often dismissed as much as celebrated. The protean artist collaborated with many of the key personalities - Diaghilev, Satie, Picasso, Bresson - who shaped music, visual arts, theatre, and the cinema in the early decades of the 20th Century. His small but crucial body of films are featured in this concise survey that begins with a documentary filmed in the artist's final years, as he decorates the interior of a chapel in the South of France.