Toronto Screening of The Animation Show of Shows

The 18th Annual Animation Show of Shows Trailer - Coming Soon from Acme Filmworks on Vimeo.

The 18th annual Animation Show of Shows will be screening at the Carlton Cinema, 20 Carlton Street, from March 31 to April 6.  The films are:

Stems - Ainslie Hendersen (Scotland)

Shift - Cecilia Puglesi & Yijun Liu (U.S.)

Pearl - Patrick Osborne (U.S.)

Crin-crin - Iris Alexandre (Belgium)

Mirror - Chris Ware, John Kuramoto, Ira Glass (U.S.)

Last summer in the garden - bekky O¹Neil (Canada)

Waiting for the New Year - Vladimir Leschiov (Latvia)

Piper - Alan Barillaro (U.S.)

Bøygen - Kristian Pedersen (Norway)

Afternoon Class - Seoro Oh (Korea)

About a Mother - Dina Velikovskaya (Russia)

Exploozy - Joshua Gunn, Trevor Piecham, & John McGowan (U.S.)

Inner Workings - Leo Matsuda (U.S.)

CORPUS - Marc Héricher (France)

BLUE - Daniela Sherer (Israel)

MANOMAN - Simon Cartwright (England)

ALL THEIR SHADES - Chloé Alliez (Belgium)

Toronto Screenings of My Life as a Courgette

My Life as a Courgette (aka My Life as a Zucchini) is a Swiss-French stop motion feature that was nominated for an Oscar and has won prizes at festivals all over the world.

While it is playing in theatres in the U.S. and Canada, it has no release date for a run in Toronto.  However, it will screen twice at the TIFF Kids International Film Festival, once on April 9 at 10:45 a.m. and once on April 17 at 3:45 p.m.

Information about the film can be found here and information about the festival is here.

Laika Speculation

I am thousands of miles from Laika's studio and have no inside information.  However, I've been interested in following the company's fortunes as it is one of the few companies making stop motion features.

Travis Knight, CEO, animator and director, is going to direct a Transformers spinoff for Paramount.

This is unexpected and raises many questions about the future of Laika.  It's clear from the budgets and grosses of Laika's films that the company is not self-supporting.  I've always thought that it has survived because Travis Knight wanted it to, and because his father, Phil Knight of Nike, was willing to financially support the company on his son's behalf.

What does Travis Knight's latest move mean?  Is he just looking for a change of pace with the intention of returning to Laika?  Was there an understanding between father and son that Laika had to become profitable after some amount of time or number of films, and if it didn't the subsidy would end?

Travis Knight is the reason that Laika exists.  Without him, there is no reason for Phil Knight to finance a money-losing company.  Perhaps this is nothing more than an opportunity that popped up and was hard to resist, but Travis Knight's plans and the box office success of the Transformer's spinoff could have a major impact on the continued existence of Laika.