Program | Resfest | 10 | Italy | Turin | International Festival of Digital Cinema

EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN: FILMMAKING WITH A PURPOSE

When wading through the thousands of submissions received this year, one fact was more apparent than ever before: filmmakers are increasingly pushing themselves to respond directly to the complexities of modern life. Here is a collection of stylistically disparate work that is unashamedly issues-based. And those issues themselves are far-reaching, including the fragility of the environment, stem cell research, deforestation, nuclear proliferation and the anti-globalization movement, to name just a few. At a historical moment when many of us are feeling a greater drive to act, and act responsibly – both individually and collectively – it is a source of considerable encouragement and inspiration to find talented filmmakers so eager to lead the way.

ALIVE IN JOBURG
CANADA/SOUTH AFRICA | 6:20 | 2005
DIRECTOR/VFX/EDIT: NEILL BLOMKAMP
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: CARLO TRULLI
SOUND DESIGNER: FRANCOIS LAFLEUR
COMPOSER: CLINTON SHORTER
PROSTHETIC EFFECTS: SARAH BERGEEST
With Alive in Joburg, award-winning director Neill Blomkamp, recently tapped to direct a feature film based on Halo, brings American science-fiction into a third-world context. Set in Johannesburg, the CG-driven piece is presented as a documentary which grapples with one of the most pressing topics in South Africa today – the influx of illegal aliens. However, Blomkamp treats the term a bit more literally than you might expect.

BADGERED
UK | 7:00 | 2005
DIRECTOR: SHARON COLMAN
PRODUCTION COMPANY: TANDEM
Growing up, director Sharon Colman often wondered what the animals must have thought about the subterranean weapons caches at the nuclear base near her childhood home in Scotland. In her Oscar-nominated student film, Badgered, she uses traditional hand-drawn animation to imagine their side of the story, telling an emotional tale of a badger whose sleep is disturbed when a truck comes to store weapons beneath his hillside home.

FOREST CLEARING
UK | 2:53 | 3006
DIRECTORS: SIMON ROBSON, PATRICK VALE
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: ALI MATAR
TOOLS: DIGIBETA
Produced under Channel 4’s MESH animation scheme, Forest Clearing offers a cautionary tale of environmental destruction and mankind’s hubris, in which a lame deer makes a Faustian bargain with a sinister figure with frightening ambitions. The film’s animation was painstakingly created by printing out UV maps of the film’s 3-D models, which were painted, scanned and finally wrapped back onto each model.

HUNGRY PLANET
US | 1:40 | 2006
ANIMATION: HOWARD TSAI
CINEMATOGRAPHER: ROXANNE LEE
MUSIC EDITOR: MIMI HU
TOOLS: ILLUSTRATOR, PHOTOSHOP, AFTER EFFECTS, CINEMA 4D, FINAL CUT PRO
Winner of a 2006 Adobe Design Achievement Award, Hungry Planet transforms woodcut illustration into a pointed motion graphics piece that employs the visual vocabulary of the organic food movement to challenge consumers to imagine a world without genetically modified food. The film is also a tribute to the American agricultural scientist and Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug.

PIZZA SURVEILLANCE FEATURE
US | 2004 | 2:20
DIRECTOR: MICAH LAAKER
Produced for the American Civil Liberties Union, Pizza Surveillance Feature is a simple Flash animation imagining privacy in the not-so-distant future. It’ll make you laugh… nervously.

WHAT WE'VE FOUND OUT ABOUT STEM CELLS
UK | 13:00 | 2006
WRITER/DIRECTOR RICHARD FENWICK
PRODUCER: MARK GALES
RESEARCH: MARK GALES, RICHARD FENWICK
NARRATOR: JOY SANDERS
ILLUSTRATOR: RELUCTANT HERO
ANIMATORS: RICHARD FENWICK, STEPHEN AGNEW
COMPOSER: MICKEY CLARKE
SOUND DESIGNER: STU WRIGHT
ONLINE: CONDOR POST
COMMISSIONER: AV FESTIVAL
FUNDERS: WELLCOME TRUST
TOOLS: ILLUSTRATOR, AFTER EFFECTS
Director Richard Fenwick worked with the Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Developmental Genetics at the University of Newcastle in an effort to go beyond the two-dimensional sound bites with which the media has discussed the embryonic stem cell debate and really delve into the ethics of the issue. The result is this simple, colorful animated film, which seeks to demystify the complicated world of stem cell research.