We are thrilled to share that Fonic has worked on two film selected in this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the Official Selection Short Films category. Animator and filmmaker, Elizabeth Hobbs’s new film, ‘The Debutante’ and animator and illustrator Emma Calder’s film ‘Beware of Trains’. Fonic managed and recorded all the voice artists and mixed both films and sound designed ‘The Debutante’.
‘The Debutante’ is based on a story of the same name by Leonora Carrington and tells the story of a young debutante who frees her friend, a hyena from London Zoo, so that it might take her place at her coming-out ball. Carrington (1917 – 2011) was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist and ‘The Debutante’ expressed Carrington’s feelings about the society she was being moulded to as a young woman in England, which was at odds with her defiant and more wild nature. Hobbs celebrates Carrington’s bold and funny story with ink, paint and collage, accompanied by a score by composer Hutch Demouilpied.
Hobbs is an animated filmmaker based in East London. Her films are created under a rostrum camera, and are made with many different techniques and materials; ink on bathroom tiles, typewriters, watercolour on paper, butterfly prints and rubber stamps. Her films are experimental but with a clear narrative, often based on unusual and overlooked historical stories and figures. In 2019, she received a BAFTA British Short Animation nomination for I’m OK, and in 2020, she was invited to become a member of the Short Films and Feature Animation branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The Debutante is produced by Animate Projects, with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery, and with thanks to the Estate of Leonora Carrington.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Emma Calder’s ‘Beware of Trains’ is produced by Pearly Oyster Productions and funded by BFI and was written and directed by Calder and produced by Dhiraj Mahey and Harriet Titlow
The film tells a story of a woman with extreme anxiety which is devoured by four major preoccupations – the man she met by chance on a train, her dying father, her daughter’s safety, and the murder she dreams she has committed. You can watch the trailer here
Calder works across all mediums from collage, wire models, computer-generated imagery, watercolours, spontaneous paintings created directly under the camera and a few more besides. If a piece of work demands a unique and original look, she will invent it. She has worked as an Animation Director, Artist and Graphic Designer and most recently she has written, designed and illustrated books, for both adults and children.
The Annecy Festival was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France and was where the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) was founded. The festival is a competition between animated films of various techniques, classified in various categories:
- Feature films
- Short films
- Films produced for television and advertising
- Student films
- Films made for the internet
- Feature films contrechamp in competition (since 2007)
Over the course of its 60 years, the Festival has established itself as a global event dedicated to animation, bringing together the most esteemed professionals from the sector to celebrate animation’s creative and diverse styles and techniques. This years festival will run from 13th to 18th June.