City of Scars: The Impressive Batman Fan Film Made for $27,000 in 21 Days

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Film | February 26th, 2016

The sys­tem is bro­ken… 

A com­mon enough sen­ti­ment in an elec­tion year, but in this case, the speak­er is Bat­man, and the proof is the 30-minute labor of love above.

Five years ago, father and son Bat­man fans Sean and Aaron Schoenke spent $27,000 to make City of Scars, this thrilling­ly grim entry into the canon.

The Jok­er may have escaped, but the Schoenkes part ways with a cer­tain Hol­ly­wood fran­chise by con­fin­ing the cyn­i­cism to the sto­ry. The prospect of measly box office returns did­n’t stop them! They knew from the get go that their take would be zero. DC Comics allows ordi­nary mor­tals to use its char­ac­ters in their own inde­pen­dent projects, pro­vid­ed they don’t attempt to real­ize a prof­it.

Pre­dictably dis­mal box office fig­ures aside, the Schoenkes’ efforts have paid off splen­did­ly in oth­er ways. City of Scars, and its 2011 sequel, Seeds of Arkham, below, have gar­nered a gen­er­ous help­ing of atten­tion and awards (The Wall Street Jour­nal called City of Scars “impres­sive”), and the tal­ent­ed vol­un­teer cast and crew have ben­e­fit­ed from increased vis­i­bil­i­ty. Rather than reward­ing him­self with a new car or a man­sion in Bel Air, Schoenke the Younger broke with tra­di­tion, and cast him­self as Nightwing.

These days, the Shoenkes’ pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Bat in the Sun, has legions of fans, just like Bat­man! Super­hero devo­tees are a noto­ri­ous­ly tough crowd, but Bat in the Sun’s dark psy­cho­log­i­cal vision pass­es muster with them, as does its taste in vil­lains.

Box office totals notwith­stand­ing, the same can­not be said for the stuff the stu­dio churns out. (The sys­tem is bro­ken, remem­ber?)

The Schoenkes have chan­neled their indie suc­cess into a fran­chise of their own, Super Pow­er Beat Down, a month­ly web series where­in view­ers get to decide which super­hero won the staged bat­tle. Watch it below, in prepa­ra­tion for choos­ing the next vic­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Russ­ian Super­heroes: Artist Draws Tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian Folk Heroes in a Mod­ern Fan­ta­sy Style

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. You don’t need to cos-play to hang with her at the New York Fem­i­nist Zine­fest this Sun­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How Chris Marker’s Radical SciFi Film, La Jetée, Changed the Life of Cyberpunk Prophet, William Gibson

in Film, Sci Fi | February 26th, 2016

Every­one remem­bers the first time they saw La Jetée. For cyber­space- and cyber­punk-defin­ing writer William Gib­son, author of such sui gener­is sci­ence-fic­tion nov­els as Neu­ro­mancer, Vir­tu­al Light, and Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion, that life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence came in the ear­ly 1970s, dur­ing a film his­to­ry course at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia. “Noth­ing I had read or seen had pre­pared me for it,” he tells The Guardian in a reflec­tion on the lega­cy of Chris Mark­er’s “thrilling and prophet­ic” 1962 short film, a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic time-trav­el love sto­ry told almost entire­ly with still pho­tos. (You can get a taste of it from the short clip above and a longer one here.) “Or per­haps every­thing had, which is essen­tial­ly the same thing.”

I can’t remem­ber anoth­er sin­gle work of art ever hav­ing had that imme­di­ate and pow­er­ful an impact, which of course makes the expe­ri­ence quite impos­si­ble to describe. As I expe­ri­enced it, I think, it drove me, as RD Laing had it, out of my wretched mind. I left the lec­ture hall where it had been screened in an altered state, pro­found­ly alone. I do know that I knew imme­di­ate­ly that my sense of what sci­ence fic­tion could be had been per­ma­nent­ly altered.

Part of what I find remark­able about this mem­o­ry today was the tem­po­ral­ly her­met­ic nature of the expe­ri­ence. I saw it, yet was effec­tive­ly unable to see it again. It would be over a decade before I would hap­pen to see it again, on tele­vi­sion, its screen­ing a rare event. See­ing a short for­eign film, then, could be the equiv­a­lent of see­ing a UFO, the expe­ri­ence sur­viv­ing only as mem­o­ry. The world of cul­tur­al arte­facts was only atem­po­ral in the­o­ry then, not yet lit­er­al­ly and instant­ly atem­po­ral. Car­ry­ing the mem­o­ry of that screen­ing’s inten­si­ty for a decade after has become a touch­stone for me. What would have hap­pened had I been able to rewind? Had been able to rent or oth­er­wise access a copy? It was as though I had wit­nessed a Mys­tery, and I could only remem­ber that when some­thing final­ly moved – and I realised that I had been breath­less­ly watch­ing a sequence of still images – I very near­ly screamed.

You’d think that would count as enough Chris Mark­er-grant­ed aston­ish­ment for one life­time — and what­ev­er inspi­ra­tion Gib­son drew from La Jetée, he’s cer­tain­ly put to good use — but the film­mak­er, ever-curi­ous tech­nol­o­gy and media enthu­si­ast, and “pro­to­type of the twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry man” had anoth­er shock in store. Two years after Mark­er’s death, and about thir­ty after Gib­son’s first view­ing of La Jetée, the lat­ter found that he had actu­al­ly appeared, unbe­knownst to him­self, in one of the for­mer’s oth­er movies.

“I was in a Chris Mark­er film and I nev­er knew until today,” tweet­ed Gib­son, append­ing the entire­ly under­stand­able tag #gob­s­macked. His image pops up at the begin­ning of Lev­el Five, Mark­er’s sto­ry of a com­put­er pro­gram­mer’s search for a way to vir­tu­al­ly recre­ate the Sec­ond World War’s Bat­tle of Oki­nawa, released in 1997 in France but not until 2014 in the Unit­ed States. As a work con­cerned with real­i­ty’s rela­tion­ship to its recon­struc­tion by human mem­o­ry — a fas­ci­na­tion of Mark­er’s all the way through his career — as well as with real­i­ty’s rela­tion­ship to its only-just-begin­ning recon­struc­tion by com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, it makes sense that its nar­ra­tion, which takes the form of the pro­tag­o­nist’s video diary, would ref­er­ence Gib­son’s con­cep­tion of cyber­space.

Always mak­ing max­i­mal­ly cre­ative use of the rela­tion­ship between their words and their images, Mark­er does­n’t hes­i­tate to flash the author’s face onscreen between bursts of gray sta­t­ic (an ele­ment famous­ly evoked in Neu­ro­mancer’s open­ing) and footage of Japan (anoth­er site of deep inter­est for both cre­ators). Gib­son him­self always comes off as calm and reflec­tive in per­son, espe­cial­ly for a crafts­man of such stim­u­lat­ing­ly real­ized, infor­ma­tion-over­loaded, sweep­ing­ly influ­en­tial visions of the inten­si­fied present. But could any­one ever ful­ly recov­er from the aston­ish­ment of see­ing them­selves pass­ing through one of Chris Mark­er’s?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Gib­son Reads Neu­ro­mancer, His Cyber­punk-Defin­ing Nov­el (1994)

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

The Owl’s Lega­cy: Chris Marker’s 13-Part Search for West­ern Culture’s Foun­da­tions in Ancient Greece

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Wes Anderson Movie Sets Recreated in Cute, Miniature Dioramas

in Art, Film | February 25th, 2016

Wes Anderson’s per­fec­tion­ist films often look like doll­hous­es enlarged to fit in human actors, but Barcelona-based illus­tra­tor Mar Cerdà has one-upped the direc­tor and cre­at­ed her own minia­ture dio­ra­mas repli­cat­ing sets from sev­er­al of his films.

This is metic­u­lous work done in water­col­or, then pre­cise­ly cut and com­bined into scenes both two- and three-dimen­sion­al. For any­one who has tried to cut some­thing very small and fid­dly with an x‑acto knife, you’ll appre­ci­ate her skill. (The artist in me is com­plete jel­ly, as they say.) So far she has recre­at­ed the concierge desk from The Grand Budapest Hotel, the berth from The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed, and the bath­room from The Roy­al Tenen­baums, com­plete with Mar­got and her mom Ethe­line. (If you look deep­er, you will also find this mini Mar­got box.)

Her love of Ander­son is no sur­prise if you look at the oth­er work in her port­fo­lio. Her book Famil­iari is a series of fig­ures that can be flipped to make “80,000 dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies,” all of which give off the Tenen­baum group shot vibe. And her lov­ing­ly detailed recre­ation of an entry in a Menor­ca-locat­ed house shares a love of cute and col­or­ful with the director’s art direc­tion.

Dio­ra­mas aside, by the way, her water­col­or tech­nique as well as her fig­u­ra­tive work is on point.

Cur­rent­ly, Cerdà is work­ing on a Star Wars-themed dio­ra­ma because, hey why not? Most every­body in the world loves that uni­verse. And she also just fin­ished a recre­ation of a scene from Zoolan­der. Fol­low her on Insta­gram, because there’s sure to be more to come.

via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Orson Welles Narrates the Russian Revolution in Ten Days That Shook the World (1967)

in Film, History | February 24th, 2016

“St. Peters­burg, cap­i­tal of Rus­sia. Octo­ber the 25th, 1917. The time: twen­ty-one min­utes to ten in the evening. At anchor in the riv­er Neva, the cruis­er Auro­ra waits to take her place in his­to­ry. In pre­cise­ly one min­ute’s time, the crew, led by Bol­she­viks, will fire a shot to sig­nal the attack on the win­ter palace.” So begins Ten Days That Shook the World — not John Reed’s 1919 book of reportage on the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion, nor Sergei Eisen­stein’s 1928 film based on it, but a 1967 doc­u­men­tary by Grana­da Tele­vi­sion. And who speaks those words? You won’t have to hear any­thing more than “St. Peters­burg” to rec­og­nize the voice of the one and only Orson Welles.

Welles could tell the sto­ry of any­thing, of course, and he does the expect­ed good job recount­ing that of the fall of Nico­las II, the Keren­sky regime, the Bol­she­vik takeover, and the Rus­sia that rose there­after, work­ing from a script by the Sovi­et film­mak­er Grig­ori Alexsan­drov, who co-direct­ed Eisen­stein’s film. As we lis­ten to Welles speak, we see imagery drawn from a vari­ety of sources: pho­tographs and news­pa­per clip­pings, inter­view footage, con­tem­po­rary news­reels, and even scenes from his­tor­i­cal fea­ture films about the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, espe­cial­ly Eisen­stein and Alexan­drov’s pic­ture.

I like to think that Welles appre­ci­at­ed this method of doc­u­men­tary con­struc­tion, which com­bines an over­all adher­ence to fact with occa­sion­al visu­al depar­tures from it — though the pro­duc­tion tight­ly inte­grates the “fic­tion­al” footage with the “fac­tu­al” footage, and the for­mer has in many cas­es shaped our col­lec­tive men­tal image of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion more than the lat­ter has. He would step deep into this are­na him­self less than a decade lat­er with F for Fake, his final, sui gener­is piece of film­mak­ing osten­si­bly about art forgery but real­ly, in both its form and sub­stance, about the line between the true and the false.

Watch­ing Ten Days That Shook the World here almost a half-cen­tu­ry into 1967’s future — itself a half-cen­tu­ry into 1917’s future — makes it impos­si­ble not to think about the con­tin­u­um of his­to­ry, and the shift­ing ways in which we’ve told and retold the sto­ries of those who came before us all along it. “Who dare say where the road they began to trav­el in 1917 will final­ly lead them,” asks Orson Welles of the Rus­sians at the doc­u­men­tary’s end, “and us?” The ques­tion holds up today just as it did fifty years ago — or indeed a hun­dred.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

War & Peace: An Epic of Sovi­et Cin­e­ma

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Take a Free Course on Filmmaking Featuring Brian Tufano (Trainspotting), Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) & Other Award-Winning Filmmakers

in Film, Online Courses | February 22nd, 2016

filmmaker course

The UK’s Nation­al Film and Tele­vi­sion School (NFTS) has part­nered with the British Film Insti­tute (BFI) to lift the lid on how to make great films, with a free 6 week course that starts today.

Taught by award-win­ning film­mak­ers from a range of spe­cial­ties, includ­ing Bri­an Tufano and Mike Fig­gis, it cov­ers every­thing from sto­ry­telling, to bud­get­ing, to under­stand­ing the impact of a sound­track.

Here, for instance, is Bri­an Tufano, the estab­lished cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, talk­ing about film­ing the infa­mous toi­let scene in Trainspot­ting — turns out you can do a great deal using half a toi­let and the tech­nique trompe-l’œil (“fool the eye”).

As part of the course, you can also can also watch shorts from recent grad­u­ates of the NFTS (a few of which are already col­lect­ing awards) and get rec­om­mend­ed videos from the Baf­ta Guru col­lec­tion — a site ded­i­cat­ed to get­ting new blood into the indus­try.

The free course, Explore Film­mak­ing, is offered through Future­Learn and gives you the chance to trade opin­ions with thou­sands of oth­er film buffs online, plus get com­ments as the weeks go by from the film­mak­ers teach­ing the course.

Here’s the break­down of what the course cov­ers:

1 — Intro­duc­tion: how does a film get from script to screen?

Nik Pow­ell, direc­tor of the NFTS and pro­duc­er of more than 40 films, includ­ing The Cry­ing Game, Mona Lisa and Com­pa­ny of Wolves.

2 — Sto­ry­telling: what’s the dif­fer­ence between plot and theme?

Des­tiny Ekhara­ga, direc­tor of Gone Too Far.

3 — Deci­sions: how to choose bud­get, sched­ule, loca­tion and kit?

Mike Fig­gis, direc­tor of Leav­ing Las Vegas, Time­Code and Inter­nal Affairs.

4 — The scene: how does a direc­tor make choic­es on set?

Corin Hardy, direc­tor of The Hal­low, recent­ly announced direc­tor of a re-make of The Crow, and direc­tor of music videos for artists such as The Prodi­gy, Olly Murrs and Devlin.

5 — Time and space: how does edit­ing affect mean­ing?

Jus­tine Wright, edi­tor of Touch­ing the Void, The Iron Lady and Locke.

6 — Sound and music: what is the impact of a film’s sound­track?

Dan­ny Ham­brook, sound design­er of Curse of the Were-Rab­bit and Le Week­end, pro­duc­tion sound mix­er on Rush.

In short — there will be no more excus­es for wrong­ly ori­en­tat­ed iPhone videos. Oh and please don’t for­get to namecheck Open Cul­ture and Future­Learn in your Oscar accep­tance speech.

You can join the course for free today.

Jess Weeks is a copy­writer at Future­Learn. Along with the rest of the Future­Learn team, she’s based in the British Library in Lon­don. Yes, it is occa­sion­al­ly like Har­ry Pot­ter.

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27 Movies References in The Simpsons Put Side-by-Side with the Movie Scenes They Paid Tribute To

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Television | February 19th, 2016

If an entire gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can adults suf­fers from Cin­e­mat­ic Chick­en Vs. Egg Syn­drome, it’s The Simp­sons’ fault.

Edi­tor Celia Gómez’ side-by-side shot com­par­i­son above makes plain how a 30-year-old Cit­i­zen Kane vir­gin could expe­ri­ence a sense of deja vu on his or her inau­gur­al view­ing. The Simp­sons pulled from it for “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” when said view­er was but a lit­tle tot. Three years lat­er, they did it again wit 1993’s “Rose­bud.”

Par­ents who would nev­er have allowed their sen­si­tive lit­tle dar­lings in the room while screen­ing Full Met­al Jack­et or Requiem for a Dream relaxed their vig­i­lance where the fam­i­ly from Spring­field was con­cerned.

When The Simp­sons’ kilt­ed Groundskeep­er Willie chaste­ly recross­es his legs in an inter­ro­ga­tion room, no kid is going to fix­ate on what lies beneath. (FYI, it’s a noto­ri­ous­ly com­man­do Sharon Stone in 1992’s NSFW thriller, Basic Instinct.)

What makes these homages so great is the atten­tion to detail. Be it Itchy and Scratchy or Michael Mad­sen and Kirk Baltz as his cop vic­tim in Reser­voir Dogs, count on the cam­era to drift to an emp­ty door­way when the action gets too intense.

Spoil­ers abound. Those who’ve not yet seen Thel­ma and Louise, Psy­cho, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest can con­sid­er them­selves fore­warned.

Want a crash course in The God­fa­ther? Watch the Simp­sons.

No offense to the human actors who orig­i­nat­ed the roles, but it’s incred­i­ble how the ani­ma­tors can imbue their char­ac­ters with all the rel­e­vant emo­tions. Their eyes are lit­tle more than dots on ping­pong balls! (Check out Homer’s dead expres­sion on 1994’s Ter­mi­na­tor 2  par­o­dy, “Homer Loves Flan­ders.”)

The com­plete list of films fea­tured above:

Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la (1992)

A Clock­work Orange (1971)

Pulp Fic­tion (1994)

Requiem for a dream (2000)

The Gold Rush (1925)

Full Met­al Jack­et (1987)

The Fugi­tive (1993)

Ter­mi­na­tor 2 (1991)

Reser­voir Dogs (1992)

The Birds (1963)

Risky Busi­ness (1983)

Cit­i­zen Kane (1941)

Psy­cho (1960)

The silence of the lambs (1991)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Basic Instinct (1992)

Offi­cial and Gen­tle­man (1982)

One flew over the cuck­oo’s nest (1975)

2001: A space Odis­sey (1968)

Trainspot­ting (1996)

Thel­ma and Louise (1991)

The God­fa­ther (1972)

Taxi Dri­ver (1976)

The Shin­ing (1980)

Spi­der­man (2002)

ET the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al (1982)

Dr. Strange Love (1964)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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A Tour of Stanley Kubrick’s Prized Lens Collection

in Film, Photography | February 18th, 2016

One of the many rea­sons Stan­ley Kubrick was such a for­mi­da­ble film­mak­er was that he came to cin­e­ma after many years as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for pub­li­ca­tions like Look mag­a­zine. Not only did that give him the kind of eye that knew how to tell (and sell) visu­al­ly and with max­i­mum effi­cien­cy, it meant that he real­ly knew his cam­era and by exten­sion his lens­es. He knew what each lens could do, its strengths and weak­ness­es, and–as in those days, all were hand-ground–their indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties.

Very few direc­tors keep up with cam­era tech–that’s usu­al­ly the job of the cinematographer–but Kubrick did. Although he was­n’t the first direc­tor to use Steadicam, he was the first (on The Shin­ing) to get the rig mod­i­fied so it could coast close to the ground.

In this video, Joe Dun­ton, who owned one of the major cam­era rental facil­i­ties in Lon­don and worked very close­ly with Kubrick, takes us on a tour of Kubrick’s lens col­lec­tion. For those who went to the trav­el­ing Kubrick exhib­it two to three years ago, a selec­tion of these were on dis­play, and Dunton’s inter­view seems to have been part of a sim­i­lar show in Frank­furt.

Kubrick was a tin­ker­er, and many of the lens­es here he mod­i­fied him­self, com­bin­ing bod­ies, or chang­ing a still cam­era lens so that it could mount onto his favorite film cam­era, the Arri­flex IIc, a rel­a­tive­ly small hand­held movie cam­era that he often oper­at­ed him­self.

The direc­tor rarely rent­ed, pre­fer­ring to buy his own lens­es to keep. He was also a big fan of using nat­ur­al light when he could–further evi­dence of the influ­ence of his pho­to­jour­nal­ism career. Nat­ur­al light could be as dim as the flick­er of a can­dle, which led to the use of a Zeiss lens designed for NASA as a way of pho­tograph­ing space–Kubrick used it for the evening shots in Bar­ry Lyn­don in order to cap­ture can­dle­light.

Also shown, the high­ly cov­et­ed Ange­nieux 10-to‑1 zoom lens, and what would a Kubrick film be with­out those icon­ic slow zooms.

If there is an unsung hero in all this, it’s a man named George Hill, who was Kubrick’s go-to-guy when he need­ed a lens cre­at­ed. It was the only guy he trust­ed to clean his lens­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Kickstart Pakistan’s First Hand-Animated Feature Film, The Glassworker, Inspired by Hayao Miyazaki

in Animation, Film | February 17th, 2016

Casu­al ani­ma­tion fans have a cer­tain men­tal map of where inter­est­ing ani­mat­ed films come from, whose high­light­ed places include, of course, Amer­i­ca and Japan, as well as the Sovi­et republics that pro­duced some tru­ly strange and won­der­ful stuff back in the day behind the Iron Cur­tain. But now, a 25-year-old ani­ma­tor named Usman Riaz aims to put his home­land on that map as well with The Glass­work­er, which, should he raise its bud­get on Kick­starter, will become Pak­istan’s very first whol­ly hand-ani­mat­ed fea­ture film.

“Over the past five years, Riaz became known for an impres­sive, self-taught style of play­ing music that land­ed him the TED stage, on NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­cert, and an affil­i­a­tion with EMI Pak­istan,” writes Beck­ett Muf­son at The Cre­ators Project. [We fea­tured him play­ing gui­tar here on OC 5 years ago. See the clip below.] “But rather than tum­bling down the rab­bit hole of a music career in Pak­istan, he’s embraced his oth­er love: ani­ma­tion.” Muf­son quotes Riaz as remem­ber­ing how, “when I was a child, I admired the way peo­ple made pic­tures move. I spent long hours watch­ing films by Stu­dio Ghi­b­li before I could ful­ly under­stand what their mes­sages were. And they helped me see the beau­ty in the mun­dane, and the tragedy in the beau­ti­ful.”

Watch The Glass­work­er’s teas­er at the top or its Kick­starter pro­mo video just above, and you’ll imme­di­ate­ly feel the influ­ence of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, mak­ers of such already time­less movies as Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Spir­it­ed Away, and its mas­ter­mind Hayao Miyaza­ki. Their inspi­ra­tion man­i­fests not just in the look of the film’s art, but also in its warty com­ing-of-age sto­ry involv­ing a young boy, an appren­tice glass­work­er, a young girl, and a vio­lin­ist, and even in its music, which to Riaz has the utmost impor­tance to sto­ry­telling: “The music deter­mines the scenes for me,” he said in his Cre­ators Project inter­view. “If I have a par­tic­u­lar idea or score writ­ten down the visu­als come auto­mat­i­cal­ly.”

If all goes accord­ing to plan and The Glass­work­er rais­es its $50,000 bud­get on Kick­starter with­in the next 45 days, Mano Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios — which Riaz found­ed along with a group of ani­ma­tors, design­ers, and pro­duc­ers from not just Pak­istan, but the Unit­ed States, Britain, and Malaysia just for this project — will release the movie in four parts, the first of which should appear in May of next year. Now that Miyaza­ki has osten­si­bly ani­mat­ed his last film, his fans have kept their eyes open for a pos­si­ble suc­ces­sor, though as Riaz him­self insists, “Noth­ing can touch Ghi­b­li.” But in this day and age, why should­n’t that suc­ces­sor come from Pak­istan?

viaThe Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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