I made the poster for this great short film written and directed by Mark Slutsky and produced by my friends at Prospector Films. It’s premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
The film stars Jessica Paré (Mad Men) and Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky) and it’s very good. I’ve watched it like 15 times and like it more every time.
“Hell yes. This is how public money should be spent.”
-Cory Doctorow on NFB.ca
True story:
When I was teaching in Korea, my students didn’t know anything about Canada. To Korean kids, Canada is as abstract and irrelevant as Antarctica. When Canada Day rolled around I wanted to show them a movie. Something that might give them an idea of where I came from.
I googled the NFB thinking maybe I could download or pay to show them The Hockey Sweater online somehow.
Nothing.
There were only institutional copies of the film on DVD for over $50.
Fast-foward four years and I’ve been working on NFB.ca for over a year. We’ve put over 700 films – documentaries, animations – online, free for home-viewing.
The site moved out of beta last week and made headlines across the country. There are over 10 pages of comments on the CBC.ca news story and just about all of them are overwhelmingly positive.
When I think of Canada, I think of this movie. Conflicted, cold, charming.
I hope there’s a Canadian teacher in Korea right now showing this to a classroom full of kids.
Here are a couple preliminary gouache sketches I did for my piece for the Totoro Forest Project. I didn’t really need to do them, I just had my paints out and wanted to play around before starting.
Here’s the site we’ve been working on at the NFB for the last while.
Basically, we’re putting a wealth of classic Canadian documentaries and animated films online for free. Films like The Logdriver’s Waltz, Cosmic Zoom, and Neighbours – and a whole slew of films I’m still discovering.
There’s a nice post on Metafilter that’s full of great suggestions on the site. Also Hugh McGuire suggests a few places to start.
They’re all there. They’re not in super-duper HD – but they are higher-quality-than-YouTube and quite suitable for full-screen viewing. We are testing the site, so it’s still in beta mode, but it’s quite functional.
As we’ve been uploading the films, tagging, and rewriting their descriptions for the Web, I haven’t had time to watch many of them. Only this week have I started watching what we have up there. And I’m really… moved by films I’m watching. There are films that make Canadian history riveting (Days of Whiskey Gap) and films that make Canadian art seem profound and mature (Bill Reid).
Oh and here’s my favourite film on the site so far. A gorgeous animated film from the ’60s called, Romance of Transportation in Canada. I first read about it in Cartoon Modern, Amid Amidi’s book about classic animation. Watch the whole thing here… for free.
What do you think of the site? What can we do to improve it?
TIFF announces its 2008 line-up. The Gala screening goes to a Korean Western:
Drawing inspiration from Sergio Leone’s 1966 classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Kim (The Foul King, TIFF 2000) returns to TIFF with the first-ever “kimchi western.” This is also South Korea’s biggest budget movie ever.
Looks a bit block-bustery, but still infused with the style of Korean cinema.
Someone posted this video response to our Fun with a Digital Camera video:
Here’s a project I did over the summer: the DVD package design for the North American release of Aron Gauder’s The District – a Hungarian animated film that’s been doing the festival rounds for the last couple years. A Montreal production company bought the rights to distribute the film in North America and asked me if I was interested in doing the package design.
I was very naive. It was an immense amount of work. I learned the hard way that “package design” not only means designing the package, but the promo materials, the puck design, jewel inserts, and the DVD menus. (Five screens of eight chapter sections make for a very large Photoshop file). Fortunately, Erin had some free time and helped me put everything together.
It was a steep learning curve withe Adobe InDesign – and even now I’m worried about some of the resolutions that made it into the final product. Otherwise I’m happy with the way it looks and it will be fun to see it in our local video shop.
Also of interest:
*Cartoon Brew: The District Arrives in North America
*The District on Amazon.com
Trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Probably the best film I’ve seen this year. My short review here.