A project aiming to challenge the seemly contradicting concepts of animation and war memory. The project involves 10 selected films, their rationale, two roundtable discussion topics and the graphic design of all materials.
Created in: May, 2020
Special thanks: Dr Benjamin Nickl
A virtual gallery is curated to accompany the project for showcasing the festival in a physical location.
The project is presented at Sydney Screen Studies Network’s Undergraduate Symposium for 2020.
War has been a significant part of our human history. There are complicated, even conflicting emotions attached to war - some want to forget, and some want to remember. Across different cultures and various generations, war can refer to different experiences and memories for each individual.
In this process of negotiating one's relationship with war, the medium of film turns up and records our understandings of it. Animated film as a sub-genre, has been functioning uniquely to document, present, and educate us about the war. By telling stories without putting real people on the screen, animated war film can distance us from, but at the same time invite us into its own film culture.
The ten film programs curated in this festival features animation pieces produced in different times and cultures. And with two roundtable discussions, I hope this film festival can open up a journey for you to explore how animated films situate in the broad war history, and how you, no matter how far or how close you have been with a war, are in relation to it.
The Power to Document
Animated Film (Not) For Children
At first glance, animated and documentary films are two genres seeming not possible to integrate. The fundamental absence of human character in animation questions its capability to document.
However, from Victory Through Air Power produced during WWII, to When the Wing Blows in the 1980s, and to Walts with Bashir in the 21st century, filmmakers constantly try to mash the two genres together and present the audience animation's approach of reaching realism. Further, will it be possible to say that the distance between characters and viewers provided in animated films, actually expands what can be put on the screen? Traumatic memories such as the killing, the suffering, the wounded and the dead, seem to have a way - the animation - to be visualized. So, can animation be real? Does it have the capability to write our war history?
Animated film has long been a medium that targets children as its audience. It features children, tells children's stories, and intends to communicate with children. Like many Japanese animated films presented in this festival, they let us see the world, our war history, through children's eyes. But we also understand that not all animation is considered children-friendly. They can be traumatic and cruel even for adult audience.
This roundtable will be exploring the relationship between three keywords - animation, war and children. What do we see from a children's perspective in animated films? And, can animated film become a potential way to pass on, or educate the young generation about the war?