A utobiographies in animation

1. Autobiographies in animation Akshat Jain, DebabrataSengupta, ShameekGanguly

2. Structure of Presentation

3. Tracing the History – ORIGIN IN ‘AUTO-COMICS’

4. Autobiographical comics are autobiography in the form of comic books or comic strips. The form first became popular in the underground comics movement. • Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence. Robert Crumb - founder of the underground comix movement, regarded as its most prominent figure

5. CASE STUDIES • The stories in American Splendor (1976) concern the everyday life of Pekar in Cleveland, Ohio. • Situations covered includes his experiences at his work place, his relations with friends and family. • Other stories concern everyday situations such as Pekar's troubles with his car, money, his health, and his concerns and anxieties in general.

7. A GRAPHICAL MEMOIR (1994)

8. BLANKETS - Craig Thompson (2003) The book tells the story of Thompson's childhood in an evangelical christian family, his first love, and his early adulthood.

9. FUN HOME – Alison Bechdel (2006) This graphic memoir chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, USA, focusing on her complex relationship with her father.

10. STITCHES – David Small (2009) • Depicts the coming-of-age story with dazzling, kaleidoscopic images • Small tells us of his journey from sickly child, to cancer patient to a troubled teen. • Dream of becoming an artist becomes the ultimate survival statement.

11. From the Canvas to the Camera - Exploring Animated Autobiographical Movies

12. Persepolis (2007) • First animated autobiography by an ordinary person (MarjaneSatrapi was a cartoonist, not an animator). • Persepolis tackles the issue of cultural globalization in a country (Iran) going through radical shifts away from tolerance for Western culture. • Persepolis is about the director MarjaneSatrapi’s evolution as a young woman, an Iranian and a global citizen as she lives through the 1970s revolution, moves to Vienna for school and back to Iran again where she sees profound changes in her home country.

14. Satrapi on Persepolis • “Animation is just a technique” (of narrating one’s life story). • “This is based on my own experiences and then what is true and what is not true and what I did and what I did not, this is my own secret”

15. Waltz with Bashir (2008) • Follows Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman as he struggles to remember his time as an Israeli soldier present during the 1982 Lebanese massacre. • Folman’s personal struggle to remember reflects a larger world of fragmentation created by war—countries, cities and lives ripped apart, shattered and struggling to piece it all back together.   • The film subtly touches on post-traumatic stress disorder and portrays the condition through animation.

16. Animation as the Technique • Animation allows for the characters to safely explore painful experiences, share fragmented dreams and tell past stories. • Provides the audience with the chance to visually experience internalized emotions, distant memories and living through a time and place that they may never have understood before.  Persepolis

17. Animation as the Technique • Waltz with Bashir: The animation of war creates a wall through which the audience can peek behind and see the horrors of war. • The stark black, yellow and orange images of the war scenes create an intimacy with the psychology of war that live action could not.

18. Cursors on the broader picture- Identifying the Genre

19. Some notable elements

20. Emotions • Find a distinct form in animation • Interplay between colors and texture create illusions of various moods • Abstract depiction possible unlike realistic feature films ‘The Runt’ – Andreas Hykade

21. Trauma • Strong emotional events often a central theme to auto animated works • Depicted often through interweaved episodic memories • Eg. • ‘Daddy’s Little bit of Dresden China’, Karen Watson which speaks of child molestation • ‘Persepolis’ and ‘Waltz with Bashir’ which speak of war

22. Introspective relief • Draws a leaf from the art of painting ones mind • Real world and animator’s inner self juxtaposed in contrast Eg. ‘Vincent’, Tim Burton

23. Metaphors • Commonplace objects come to replace real-life characters • May signify euphemism or hyperbole Eg. • Killing of rabbits parallels the deprivation of women in Andreas Hykade’s‘The Runt’ • Emotional metamorphosis depicted through animals like horse (freedom), beaver (defensiveness) and dog (slavery or idol worship) by Lee Breuer

24. Animation over realistic videography A critical perspective ‘One of the outstanding advantages of the animated film is its power of penetration. The internal workings of an organism can easily be shown in this medium. The depth of a man’s soul is more than a phrase to the animator: it can also be a picture.’ Halas and Batchelor, 1949 ‘An animated film can condense material so that an image can operate simultaneously as a retrieval of image forms, as a deployment of symbolism and metaphor.’ P. Wells, 1999

25. Conclusion • “A bridge between a static yet highly non-linear portrait, and a dynamic but mostly linear feature film”

26. Thank You!