Ishu Patel

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Ishu Patel (born April 20, 1942 in Jalsan , Gujarat , India) is an Indian-Canadian animator . He was active as an animator on the National Film Board of Canada from 1972 to 1998 and gained international fame through his innovative animation techniques, including pearls and underlit modeling clay and the diverse use of light in his films. Patel received numerous awards and was nominated twice for an Oscar .

Life

Patel grew up as the son of a peasant family in the village of Jalsan in simple circumstances, so there was neither electricity nor radio. From 1959 he studied graphic design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in what is now Vadodara and graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts . Gira Sarabhai then brought him to the newly founded National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad as a post graduate and completed his post-graduate studies at the general trade school in Basel with the help of a scholarship from the Ford Foundation . Patel then returned to the NID as a lecturer and became head of the NID's Faculty of Visual Communication. During this time he first came into contact with animated films, for example short animated films from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) were shown to the students at the NID . In retrospect, Patel referred to this as inspiration, realizing that animated short films could be created by one person. Patel carried out his first experiments in the animation film sector at the NID.

Patel, who had meanwhile also studied graphic design at the general trade school in Basel, received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study animation in the USA in 1968 , but postponed it and instead went to the Canadian NFB for a year as a student in 1970, where his role model Norman McLaren worked. Patel's film debut was the animated short film How Death Came to Earth in 1971 , in which he processed an Indian folk tale. In 1972 Patel left the NID for good and came permanently to the NFB, where from 1972 to 1974 he mainly devoted himself to animated educational shorts about puberty and contraception. Not until 1975 did he turn to the animated short film again with Perspectrum .

His animation style with the artistic use of light, which was typical for the following films, was first developed in 1977 in the short film The Bead Game , a lavishly animated short film with thousands of glass beads in stop motion , which showed the destructive forces of evolution to this day. Last but not least, Patel's aim, as in all of his films, was a political and socially critical statement, since with the film he turned against the unrest between India and Pakistan and the impending nuclear war in the course of the Cold War . In 1978, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film and a BAFTA for the film .

A non-fiction book by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross about near-death experiences inspired Patel for his next animated film Afterlife . By chance, while working on the film, Patel discovered the light effects of backlit or underlit clay, which vary depending on the thickness of the mass. He first implemented this animation technique at Afterlife and also used it for his film Top Priority based on an African short story. "His animations with clay figures that are cleverly illuminated from below bring the mysterious and changeable character that characterizes his fables to perfection," says Animation Now! . In the Oscar-nominated animated film Paradise , among other things, pierced backgrounds were backlit in order to create elaborate light patterns. It wasn't until eight years later that Patel published his next animated film, Divine Fate , in which he worked with cameraman Pierre Landy and used new animation possibilities with light.

In 1998 Patel left the NFB and has since worked in his own studio Image par Image in Kingston , Ontario, as an animator on various feature and documentary films for the Japanese NHK and the British Channel Four, among others . For the French-language version of Sesame Street produced by CBC , Patel contributed over 100 segments. He also created commercials for United Airlines and Nippon Oil, among others . As early as the 1970s, he had made clips on income tax for the Canadian government and, as a designer, was responsible for the annual logos of the Ottawa International Animation Festival several times .

Patel was Professor of Experimental Animation in the Department of Animation and Digital Arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2001 . He also taught as a visiting professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1971: How Death Came to Earth
  • 1974: Perspectrum
  • 1974: About VD
  • 1974: About Puberty and Reproduction
  • 1974: About Conception and Contraception
  • 1975: Perspectrum
  • 1977: The Bead Game
  • 1978: Afterlife
  • 1979: Moi je pense - animation only
  • 1982: Top Priority
  • 1985: Paradise
  • 1993: Divine Fate
  • 1993: The Tibetan Book of the Dead (TV miniseries) - animation only
  • 1994: The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation - animation only
  • 1995: Another Earth | Whales - animation only

Awards (selection)

literature

  • Ishu Patel . In: Jeff Lenburg: Who's who in animated cartoons . Applause, New York 2006, pp. 277-278.
  • Ishu Patel . In: Anima Mundi (Ed.), Julius Wiedemann (Ed.): Animation Now! Taschen, Cologne u. a. 2004, pp. 200-209.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Nikita Banerjee: Interview with Ishu Patel . In: animation reporter . No. 16, April 2009, p. 12.
  2. ↑ Nikita Banerjee: Interview with Ishu Patel . In: animation reporter . No. 16, April 2009, p. 14.
  3. ↑ Ishu Patel . In: Jeff Lenburg: Who's who in animated cartoons . Applause, New York 2006, p. 278.
  4. ↑ Nikita Banerjee: Interview with Ishu Patel . In: animation reporter . No. 16, April 2009, p. 16.
  5. ↑ Ishu Patel . In: Anima Mundi (Ed.), Julius Wiedemann (Ed.): Animation Now! Taschen, Cologne u. a. 2004, p. 201.
  6. ↑ See Ishu Patel's profile on the NTU website
personal data
SURNAME Patel, Ishu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian-Canadian animator
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Jalsan , Gujarat