As someone who is quite new to Manchester as a city, and a huge fan of animation, I was delighted to find out about the Manchester Animation Festival, which runs this year from the 9th to the 13th of November. It was great to interview the festival’s director, Steve Henderson, and to speak to him about all there is to be excited about just before this year’s festival begins.
And, according to Henderson, there is a lot to be excited about. If you’re as big a fan of Studio Ghibli as I am – my favourite film of all time is Howl’s Moving Castle – Henderson recommends both Arco and Little Amelie or the Character of Rain. Arco, as he describes, is a “time-twisting tale about a boy from the far future who travels back in time to the near future”; Little Amelie or the Character of Rain is “such a human, unique film and beautifully animated”, and “heart-wrenching” to watch.
This year’s instalment will also show I Am Frankelda, an “incredible operatic master house of stop motion madness” and Mexico’s first stop motion animated feature film, about a writer who travels into her subconscious to confront Spooks, the characters in all her horror stories. Henderson says earnestly, “In a world where AI is trying to smooth and polish everything down, Frankelda is unapologetically real and human and incredible and I urge everyone to try and see this.”
‘Intensely human’ films seem, encouragingly, to be a big focus in the MAF. This is how he describes The Last Blossom, a Japanese film about a prisoner who, in his final hours in prison, hears a flower speak to him and remind him what an awful life he has lead. The same can be said, it sounds, for The Square, a forbidden love story between a Swedish diplomat in North Korea and a local traffic officer.
Other panels and previews outside of the competition this year include a feature-length screening of Adult Swim’s Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, which Henderson describes as “absolutely wild and brilliant.” Also, the UK special preview of In Your Dreams. “Everyone’s talking about K-Pop: Demonhunters, Netflix’s big animated feature film,” Henderson says, “This is Netflix’s next big animated feature film.” The director, Alex Woo, is coming to Manchester to preview the film with MAF so it’ll be available to watch in Manchester before its Netflix release. Another exciting event is a talk by a team from Disney on the making of Zootropolis 2.
I ask him how a first-timer or a piece with a smaller budget stands out against other submissions. “I suppose people might assume that budgets would make a big difference in whether we select a film for competition.” He is pleased to tell me otherwise. “We don’t see how much a film has cost… We just watch the film. And we let the stories tell us whether or not we should be playing them in the festival. We’ve seen films with absolutely huge budgets that don’t move us, and then there are films that are done with a shoestring that absolutely blow us away and find themselves contending for Academy Awards or BAFTAs.
I am interested in what the range of cultures represented by the festival is like. “We have things in different languages playing in the festival and we do screen them back-to-back, so you could be watching a French film and then three minutes later you’re watching a Japanese film, and then you head over to Iran or across the island… you go around the world when it comes to these animated films.”
One of the things I love most about animation is that it can be enjoyed by anyone of all ages. I tell Henderson about my fond memories of watching animation at my grandparents’ house, particularly Shaun the Sheep, and Madagascar with my late grandpa – watching it now I know exactly when he’d laugh, what comments he’d make.
“It’s lovely how you can be drawn back to memories when it comes to family animation,” he responds. “I have similar memories with my grandparents […] I think that’s the reason I love Wallace and Gromit so much, because I remember at Christmas watching it with Grandma and Grandad in their living room.” Fondly, he adds: “I remember being the age, I remember being the size, I remember the size of their TV and I remember being transfixed by the tiny screen but it felt like it was a cinema screen, it was absolutely incredible.”
On this note, I ask Henderson if this unifying quality of animation is reflected in the audiences who come to the festival. “We have something for family, something for industry, […] something for film lovers, and something for people who just want to see something they’ve never seen before.” In particular, the festival’s family day embodies both of our childhood memories of watching animation with older relatives, as the BBC family box set offers something for really young kids and is free to watch on the big screen, as well as short films for children from around the world.
A new screening this year is ‘Shorts for Teens’, which acts a bridge between films aimed at children and films shown in the main festival. Henderson describes this as a “warm welcome to people who really want to get into animation” and “explores all these different ideas that animated short films provide.”
I was intrigued to hear about how the festival has changed since last year, but also if there are any long-term changes on the horizon as MAF enters a new decade. In the short-term, “the festival line-up changes every year”, but more broadly in the long, Henderson tells me, “I think the festival will change as animation is changing, and we are seeing some really big shifts in the world of animation. We’re seeing that independent animated feature films are becoming bigger and bigger.”
He mentions that Flow won the Oscar for animated feature films. “Whereas that used to be an award that could only be won by a major studio like Disney or Dreamworks or Studio Ghibli, now we know that it can be won by a film made for a fraction of the cost. So, you have this kind of age of independence here and we’re really revelling in that and really excited by that.”
“The festival reflects the world of animation, I would say, and that’s what we’ve done in our program – reflected the world of animation through our talks and masterclasses and the films we’re screening. If animation changes, then the festival will change and adapt to it and it’s only going to get bigger.”
Inevitably, I was going to ask Henderson about AI in the world of animation, but our discussion moves there naturally.
“I think the biggest shift of all is AI,” he affirms. “AI has gone from something creatives could use as an option and which most creatives detested, to something which has become ubiquitous. And so, the conversation has shifted from ‘How do we get rid of it?’ to ‘How do we live with it?’ and ‘How do we ensure our creativity remains paramount in any conversations?’” It is in this mind that they have chosen to put on a talk about staying creative in an AI world.
AI is a tense topic in any creative industry, but particularly in animation, where so much of its beauty relies on the care and diligence of its creators and their unwillingness to cut corners. I mention the carefully placed fleas which fly around the dogs’ fur in Wes Anderson’s stop motion Isle of Dogs, a creative choice which brings the film to life but painstaking for the people behind it. I ask Henderson whether he thinks creatives will always be willing to pour so much heart into animating, or if we should be concerned about AI taking over the creative side.
“I don’t think AI will replace artists. It cannot tell the truth, it cannot come up with something unique, it cannot come up with something based on lived experience and it cannot come up with something based on artistic integrity. What it can do is look at what other people have done and copy it. It won’t take the next step which is: ‘How do I make that mine, how do I make that human, how do I make that unique?’ It cannot do that.
“I think that’s why we’re so excited about screening films like I Am Frankelda at the festival because it is so human, it’s so real, it’s the sort of film where if they want smoke in stop-motion, they use cotton wool buds. I can see why people are worried about AI particularly in the world of animation, I think the cheapskates will take advantage, but I don’t think that the people who want art, the people who want things that speak from one soul to another, will look towards AI to satisfy that urge.”
Henderson’s enthusiasm is contagious, and I can see why the festival has become such a prominent feature in Manchester’s creative life over the past ten years. It’s a space to relish great animation and connect with likeminded people who are equally captivated by such a diverse medium.
“What I’m looking forward to most about the festival this year”, he tells me, “is everybody getting together and meeting up with old friends and making new friends. I think that’s what the festival is about. We play a lot of animation, we show a lot of amazing work, but getting people together to appreciate and love animation is what we do best and that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
