Prologue (short film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Prologue |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 6 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Richard Williams |
| production | Imogen Sutton |
Prologue is a British animated - short film by director and animator Richard Williams from the year 2015. The six-minute film is based on the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes . The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 2016 Academy Awards.
action
2,400 years ago: Four warriors, two from Athens and two from Sparta , meet on the battlefield. They kill each other, nobody wins. A girl who witnessed the bloody massacre runs to her grandmother and cries.
background
Prologue is intended as the first part of a 90-minute film about the Greek anti-war play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, which is set during the Peloponnesian War . The short film, which, as the title suggests , is intended to serve as a prologue , was made over a period of over twelve years. Richard Williams, already 82 years old by the time the short film was completed, was assisted by his wife Imogen Sutton , who appears as a producer. Otherwise nobody else was involved in the film. The filming of the individual animations, which consist of colored pencil drawings , was filmed by Williams himself. He used original animation techniques that were already used in Gertie the Dinosaur (1914): one sheet per picture, without backgrounds, sparse use of colors. The camera was set up by Aardman Animations in the middle of William's study. As far as possible, digital post-processing was also avoided. Only the fingerprints were removed and some drawings were sharpened and straightened. The director has serious doubts about being able to realize his planned feature-length film, but considers Prologue to be the first work in his almost fifty-year career with which he is really satisfied. A second part is supposed to introduce the main characters and was almost completed in 2016.
The film was first shown at the Telluride Film Festival on September 4, 2015. He was then seen from September 11th at the Laemmle Royal Theater in West Los Angeles.
reception
The brutality of the work is surprising, even for the filmmaker. The killing sequences in the film are presented realistically and are not stingy with blood. In particular, the merging of childlike innocence and the brutality of war creates a contrast that has also been praised by critics.
The film was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 2016 Academy Awards. Bear Story , however, received the award . For Williams it was the third Oscar nomination after A Christmas Carol (1971, also in the animated short film category) and Wrong Game with Roger Rabbit (1988). For the latter he received an honorary Oscar . It was the first nomination for his wife.
The film was also nominated in the “Best British Animated Short” category at the British Academy Film Awards 2016 . However, the award was won by Edmond .
Web links
- Prologue in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Amid Amidi: Interview: Richard Williams Talks About His Oscar and BAFTA-Nominated Short 'Prologue'. Cartoonbrew.com, January 15, 2016, accessed January 10, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Bill Desowitz: Immersed in Movies: Richard Williams Gets Deeper into 'Prologue'. Indiewire.com, September 15, 2015, accessed January 10, 2017 .
- ↑ Tom Sito : Tom Sito Reviews Richard Williams' "Prologue". Flipanimation.blogspot.de, September 23, 2015, accessed on January 10, 2017 .
- ↑ Frank Scheck: 'Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films 2016': Film Review. The Hollywood Reporter , January 28, 2016, accessed January 10, 2017 .
- ↑ 2015 Oscar Nominees: Short Film (Animated) nominee. Oscar.go.com , accessed January 10, 2017 .