Hothousing animators at the NFB

Fri, Mar 30, 2007

Pat Dillon-Moore from the internationally respected National Film Board of Canada drops us a line to say that the Animation Hothouse has made a return at the NFB, where eight up-and-coming film-makers will be followed throughout their first professional short animated movie. It is obviously a huge opportunity for new animators but also, as the Hothouse label implies, a very high pressure project – fortunately this year’s new animators will have Torill Kove as their mentoring director. Regular readers will recall Torill won the Oscar for short animation at this year’s recent Academy Awards for The Danish Poet. Those of us eternally fascinated by the magic of animation can follow their progress on regular podcasts from this month through to May on the Hothouse site; from the NFB press release:

“What do you get when you cross a “taxiderm-ized” squirrel, a couple of fiddlers and some splashes of paint? Well, add a pinch of Brazilian flavour, bring to a boil over 3 months and you get a foretaste of the National Film Board of Canada’s Hothouse 4 films. Located www.nfb.ca/hothouse this year’s Hothouse, includes a regular behind-the-scenes podcast series beginning in mid-March and films from Hothouse.

(False Saints by Malcolm Sutherland from the previous round of Hothouse)

Now in its fourth edition, Hothouse is a NFB project that encourages new talent, provides an A-Z experience in professional animation filmmaking and re-imagines ways of making animation: ways that are faster, more flexible and that celebrate the shortest of short forms while maintaining creative and technological excellence. The challenging and exciting order facing these eight emerging filmmakers is to spend twelve weeks at the NFB Animation studios in Montreal to create a 30-second film on the theme “A Chance Encounter.”

This year’s participants are under the watchful eye of Academy Award®-winning director Torill Kove, whose NFB/Norway co-produced The Danish Poet received this year’s Oscar® for Best Animated Short. As mentoring director Torill will guide and advise the participants during their time at the NFB.

Over 80 applications were received for the six spots open to Canadians; the lucky participants in this year’s Hothouse 4 are James Braithwaite (Montreal), Maya Ersan (Montreal), Dale Hayward (Toronto), Carla Coma (Alberta), Jody Kramer (Vancouver) and Oliver Tsuji (Montreal). A new addition to this year’s mix was the inclusion of two young artists from Brazil; 150 proposals were submitted and Jonas Brandão (Sao Paulo) and Diego Stoliar (Rio de Janeiro) have joined the group in Montreal as part of the cooperation program signed between the NFB and the Minister of Culture of Brazil last March.

(An Aqueous Solution by Jo Meuris from the previous Hothouse)

Hothouse was created in 2003 by NFB Animation Studio producer Michael Fukushima and executive producer David Verrall. According to Fukushima the hothouse-as-pressure-cooker is a model that has proved beneficial for the NFB as a whole. “It encourages the studio to continually question animation conventions and to re-imagine how we make our films. It also helps us discover new talent and sustains the experimentation and innovation that have always defined Film Board animation.” Hothouse 4 is under the direction of Maral Mohammadian, who has recently joined the NFB Animation Studio as associate producer after several years at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. “

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