Digital and hand-drawn animation techniques are increasingly seen in short and feature-length documentaries, interweaving with traditional filming methods and sometimes carrying a whole story from start to finish.

Given that animation has the freedom to represent, stylise, and re-imagine the world, this form lends itself well to documentary stories capturing human experience and a multiplicity of narratives and perspectives.

We will be joined by a panel of seasoned documentary filmmakers and groundbreaking animators who will present a behind-the-scenes look at the artistic techniques applied to recent projects, as well as the broader motivations and challenges to representing reality in animated form.

Speakers to be announced soon.

Bella Honess Roe (moderator) teaches Film Studies at the University of Surrey. She has published extensively on areas in animation, documentary and British cinema and her book Animated Documentary was published in 2013. Prior to entering academia, Bella worked in feature film script development in London and Los Angeles.

Dee Hibbert-Jones is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker and fine artist. She works collaboratively with Nomi Talisman on film, new media and fine art projects that address critical social issues, politics and personal testimony. Hibbert-Jones was awarded the Filmmaker Award with Talisman from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke (2015) and the Gideon award for support to indigent minorities (2016) by the California Public Defenders Association. Hibbert-Jones and Talisman’s most recent animated documentary film Last Day of Freedom won Best Short Documentary at the International Documentary (IDA) Awards 2015, won an Emmy for Northern California, and was nominated for an 88th Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. Hibbert-Jones is an Associate Professor of Art and Digital Art New Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA founder and Co-director of SPARC a research centre for social and environmental justice.

Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits set up the multi-award winning animation studio The Moth Collective along with Daniel Chester and Dave Prosser. After meeting at the Royal College of Art, they formed in 2010 to share a collective passion for all things drawn. The Moth Collective has received acclaim for their imaginative and thought provoking hand-drawn work. They have since worked on a myriad of different projects, covering documentary feature films, commercials, short films, illustrated books and music videos for clients such as The New York Times, The Guardian, WWF, and Headspace.

Katerina Athanasopoulou is a Greek artist living in London who creates animated films for cinema and gallery space. She studied Fine Art at Aristotle University in Greece and graduated with an MA Animation from the RCA in 2002. Her award-winning films have been shown internationally at film festivals and galleries, including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Thessaloniki Biennale 5, Holland Animation Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb. Works include: Branches of Life (2016), commissioned by Cast Iron Radio and Recording for the Body Of Songs project, supported by Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England; Rupture (2015), commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for The Art of Saving a Life; The Violet Hour (2014), commissioned by the London College of Fashion for a brief set by the Venice Architecture Biennale, within the 2014 Now project; Apodemy (2012), a short film on Emigration and the Economic Crisis, commissioned by the Onassis Foundation, and many more.

From 29-31 October, the Frontline Club is hosting screenings as part of the Green Caravan Film Festival, a travelling festival of environmental and socially-conscious films. The full lineup can be found here.

The Wanted 18 recreates an astonishing true story: the Israeli army’s pursuit of 18 cows, whose independent milk production on a Palestinian collective farm was declared “a threat to the national security of the state of Israel.”

In response to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a group of people from the town of Beit Sahour decide to buy 18 cows and produce their own milk as a co-operative. Their venture is so successful that the collective farm becomes a landmark, and the cows local celebrities – until the Israeli army takes note and declares that the farm is an illegal security threat. Consequently, the dairy is forced to go underground, and the cows continue to produce their “Intifada milk” with the Israeli army in relentless pursuit.

Directed by: Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan
Runtime: 75′
Country: Canada
Year: 2014

On March 14, the audience at the Frontline Club travelled around the globe through five short films. All documentaries were related to current affairs, but the styles of storytelling ranged from comedy and animation, to the more classical approach.

Documentary programmer Wotienke Vermeer introduced the selection:

“Something I always try to demonstrate with the short films is that not every story is fit to be told in 52 or 90 minutes. We’re very much used to these lengths in documentary. Some films, like the last one tonight (The Only Flower), is enough to be told in six minutes.”

The first film, You Can’t Always Get What You Want by Scott Calonico, showed recently declassified White House tapes from when Lyndon B. Johnson was President. The humorous nine-minute film demonstrated his struggles with daily issues in the Oval Office, including misunderstandings with telephone operators, what he deemed to be a lack of “attractive Negros” in governmental positions, as well as limited dessert options at the White House. Director Scott Calonico also made the short film Mondo Ford, about former President Gerald Ford and his implication in the assassination of JFK.

Vladimir Putin in Deep Concentration, by directors Dana O’Keefe and Sasha Kliment, observed different manifestations of non-verbal communication in one of the world’s most powerful men. It examined the mystery behind Putin’s implacably blank face and his way of walking, and highlighted how Russians have no choice but to allow his ambitions to take over the country.

The longest film of the night, Cutting Loose by Finlay Pretsell and Adrian McDowall, showed the dreams and desires of contenders in a yearly hairdressing competition in Scottish prisons. The audience discovered how hairdressing is helping many of Scotland’s most dangerous inmates come to terms with their crimes and preparing them for life beyond prison bars.

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With Ink Ribbon Fingerprints, Pavel Braila gave a tribute to the typewriter, from its invention in the 1860’s to the closing of the last factory producing the machines in 2011. It demonstrated the typewriter’s close relationship with the industry of war and its key role in women’s emancipation.

The final short of the evening, The Only Flower by director César Pérez, followed botanist Steven Hemsley as he discovered how artificial flowers are replacing real ones throughout Beijing. As Hemsley analysed the fake plants as if they were new species, he demonstrated how people get used to the artificial aspects in their lives, comparing it with Beijing’s old quarter which was transformed into imitations to house fashion-brand shops.

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For our first Shorts at the Frontline Club we will be screening:

Every Tuesday: A Portrait of the New Yorker Cartoonists (USA)

The New Yorker Magazine is famous for its pithy, witty, and occasionally incomprehensible single-panel cartoons. The cartoons are well known, but the cartoonists are not. This film shows the very different creative processes of four of them: Sidney Harris, Emily Flake, Drew Dernavich, and Zack Kanin.

Directed by Rachel Loube
Duration: 22′
Year: 2012

Abuelas (UK)

An old woman eagerly awaits the birth of her grandchild in a small apartment in Buenos Aires. However, due to General Videla’s military dictatorship she is forced to wait over 30 years before being reunited with this grandchild.

Directed by Afarin Eghbal
Duration: 9′
Year: 2011

A Day on the Drina (BA)

A day that seems to start out as a field trip slowly changes into a journey to one of the many dark pages written by the Balkan war. In this sensitive and observational documentary director Ines Tanovic shows how big the presence of this war still is in daily life.

Directed by Ines Tanovic
Duration: 17′
Year: 2011

Chronicle of Oldrich S. (CZ)

Between 1981 and 2005 Mr Sedlacek wrote one-sentence entries in his diary about his personal life, his village and international events. Director Rudolf Smid animated 80 of these entries chosen from over two thousand daily notes. Fragments about marriage, death, cigarettes, politics, food, or the end of communism.

Directed by Rudolf Smid
Duration: 18′
Year: 2011

Guerrillera (UK)

Atmospheric shots of a night-time cleaner in an anonymous sky scraper show a world that is far away from the intimate memories shared in this film. Memories about a secret past as a guerilla fighter in Colombia and a broken family.

Guerrillera is a London Short Film Festival pick, which will take place from 4 to 13 January 2013 and is now open for submissions

Directed by Elle Sillanpaa
Duration: 20′
Year: 2011