Signe Baumane is a significant animator, right up there with Bill Plympton. I’m so happy to see her film at Seattle International Film Festival this year. And, if you are in Seattle, you must go! Details on this funny and frank flick follow including how to seek it out in Seattle:
My Love Affair With Marriage uses music and science to examine the biological chemistry of love and gender, as well as the societal pressures on an individual to conform to social mores.
My Love Affair With Marriage at SIFF takes place May 20th and May 21st. Details are right here.
A battle between Zelma’s prefrontal cortex and her nucleus accumbens.
Signe Baumane’s work has been accepted in over 300 film festivals around the world and received many awards. She was also awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.
Frank and Cora in 1946’s THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
Bill Plympton Animation Available on iTunes as of April 2015
CHEATIN’ is Bill Plimpton’s seventh full-length animated feature. It is for adults who like an All-American gritty noir story and fans of great storytelling from such greats at Terry Gilliam and Federico Fellini. Read my review here. On April 3, CHEATIN’ opens in New York and then to selected cities throughout the month. It is also available online! You can see it on Vimeo. And you can see other Plympton features on iTunes starting in April. Yes, if you’re a loyal fan or are new to his work, Bill Plympton is here! For details, and to see the movie, just go to the CHEATIN’ THE MOVIE website right here.
A Gritty Tale and a Sexual Odyssey
CHEATIN’ is visually stunning and immersive. It features the journey one woman must take in order to find what she wants. In the tradition of noir, characters must go through the yin and yang to find their true selves. Light into dark. And then dark into light. Truly, a perpetual swirl of desire and searching. And you throw into the bargain a magical soul-transfer machine, and you’ve got yourself a Bill Plympton animated feature.
Disney Can Give Bill Plympton A Call
It is always a pleasure to chat with Bill Plympton. For this interview, we cover a lot of ground on the storytelling process. We chat about how CHEATIN’ and THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE would make for a perfect double bill. And I asked Bill, the king of independent animation, if he’d ever consider working with Disney if the right project came along. Yes. Bill would take the call.
What if Hitler Opened a Theme Park Called, “Naziland”?
And we discuss some upcoming projects. You’ll want to listen to that.
Below is the podcast interview. Enjoy:
Be sure to visit the CHEATIN’ website right here. And, if you’re in the New York metro area, be sure to go to Village East Cinema on Friday, April 3, and you’ll see Bill Plympton in person! He will create a drawing for anyone who asks for one.
Ella is an enigmatic beauty. She seems so ethereal and unaccessible. And then, one day, her defenses down, she stumbles into a romance with Jake. This sounds like the start of another great Bill Plympton animated feature. It takes me back to some of my earliest memories of his work. I had seen at least some of his stuff on MTV back in the day. All I can say is, if you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to dig deeper.
Bill Plympton is one of the greats. He has a way of looking at the world that is truly original. He stepped into the spotlight with his Academy Award-nominated short, “Your Face,” in 1987. He was courted by Disney but he chose to remain independent. He’s the only animator to single-handedly draw every frame of a feature film–six times. Plympton cartoons blaze upon the screen: joyful, erotic, and full of wonder. And so that leads in to, “Cheatin’,” Bill Plympton’s latest feature.
Things don’t just move in his animation. They jiggle, ripple, undulate, sway, and sashay. There’s a perpetual sexual tension metaphorically attached to nearly everything. We begin with the long fluttering ribbon attached to Ella’s hat. In this feature, our two lovers are quite a mismatched pair but they definitely have a spark between them.
If Ella was ever aloof, Jake wears down her reserve. He rescues her twice, both times with great sexual connotations. But that’s only the beginning of our story. No sooner does boy meet girl, it seems, than boy loses girl. In fact, these two had become quite the couple when things go terribly wrong. Outside forces relentlessly work against them. For example, one of Ella’s rivals attempts to lure Jake away while he’s mowing the lawn. She carpets the sky with a pulsating pattern of her laundry. Ella retaliates with a counter-strike of her own laundry.
What happens next involves an elaborate process of regaining love. This includes a wayward magician and his mysterious “trans-soul machine.” Perhaps this contraption will shed light on what has thwarted our lover’s happiness. As this dangerous and uncertain path unfolds, our story spreads out with hints of grand opera, science fiction, and crime noir.
As in all Bill Plympton features, we find that human longing and desire, in one form or another, cannot be ignored and is seldom, if ever, denied. Amid a rogue’s gallery of buffoons and dimwits, lovers race toward each other’s hungry bodies. Sexuality will find its release whether it oozes from the walls or drips from the ceiling. And, amid the melting butter and bubbling coffee pots, a more complex story unfolds. While sex makes the world go round, Bill Plympton, like Federico Fellini and Terry Gilliam, provides much more. The content is implicit, not explicit. It’s a mix of the tragic and the comic that proves so pleasing.
“Cheatin'” is in theaters and online as of April 2015. For more details, visit the official website right here.
CHEATIN’ is the latest work from animation master Bill Plympton. If you’re in Toronto on the 15th of June, you’ll want to stop by and catch it at the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International. Hot on the heels of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, TAAFI is the natural extension to the festivities. But perhaps you’ll catch CHEATIN’ in Lawrence, Kansas or maybe Karkow, Poland. Check out the full screening list here.
Toronto Animation Arts Festival International – TAAFI – celebrates the many forms of animation from around the world, while supporting and nurturing the community that creates them. At TAAFI 2014 (June 13-16), you can immerse your senses in all things animation on Toronto’s Waterfront (Corus Quay & George Brown – Waterfront Campus)!
More details on the screening of CHEATIN’ at TAAFI follow:
