» Bill Cowell, Founder of The Buffalo Niagara
Film Festival is proud to announce a victorious
return for #2.
Bill pledges that this will be a spectacular 2nd year with large events and big
surprises to be talked about for years to come. Enjoyment to all, and to all
an enjoyable plight. See you soon.
Crossing
the Stream -
Monday, March 26th, 9:50pm Buffalo/Niagara
Marriot, Screen 1
About work. About consciousness. A mediation
on water, and the animation of water. A poem
in the shape of a stream. For Bruce Baillie.
Hand-drawn animation on paper with pencil
and watercolor. Musicians recorded individually
in Cholula, Mexico but were finally sequenced,
designed, and mixed in US. A campesino with
pack animals enters the stream. A simple,
minimalist story produces a trance animation
finally about work, and about the flash of
enlightenment. The
work process of animating 'Crossing the Stream'
was established as a meditation. The film
was made in part because all animated water
these days looks the same, and we are losing
its emotional and graphic possibilities.
This is a poem in the shape of a stream.
Dedicated to the American independent filmmaker
Bruce Baillie who inspired me to make films
with his short 'Castro Street,' 'the coming
of consciousness.
SKIP BATTAGLIA is a filmmaker,
but has been making animated film shorts for
twenty years. “Crossing the
Stream” is a type of personalized
cartoon argument. "At a time when it is
so easy to make a realistic image with photography
and video and computer, the hand drawing of a
motion picture can be regarded as an act of criticism”.
"I am trying to re-invent motion pictures,
moving them away from the assembly-line, corporate,
and naturalistic approach. Motion pictures
are now 100 years old; it's long past time that
they be personalized."
“Crossing the Stream” is Battaglia’s
15th animated film.
Battaglia is Professor in the
School of Film and Animation, Rochester Institute
of Technology. He has taught and lectured
on animation also in Mexico and Colombia.
