‘Two Balloons’ stop motion animated film to screen at Kerry Film Festival

THE magical stop-motion animated short film Two Balloons was produced in Portland, Oregon and premiered at the 30th Foyle Film Festival in Ireland in November 2017. Since then the film has been screened at some of the most prestigious international film festivals and won many awards.

Now the filmmakers are delighted to announce that Two Balloons will screen at this year’s Kerry Film Festival in Cinema Killarney as part of the Animation Shorts at 2pm on Wednesday, October 17.

Two Balloons was four years in the making and it tells the spellbinding story of two ad- venturous lemurs travelling the skies in their wondrous airships. One night they meet by chance and forge a bond which sees them through a calamity and cements their friendship.

Originally the film was envisaged as a live action short and the plan was to build two real airships, but the production ran into problems when they couldn’t secure an aircraft hangar for the required length of time. So instead Mark decided to create the film as a stop-motion animated film despite the fact that he had no prior experience of stop-motion.

As he says: ‘I was obsessive about preparation because I

had never produced a stop-motion project. Sometimes I saw pre-production as training for an endurance race I had never run before.’

Mark and his crew spent sixteen months storyboarding and building a stage to encompass the sets of the half-scale lemur world. Only then did they begin to shoot, which was an intensely time-consuming process: shots which were only ten seconds long took two months to shoot. The result is the nine-minute long Two Balloons, a poignant and heart-warming film which was a labour of love for all involved.

Since its debut the film has shown at many film festivals including Flickerfest International Short Film Festival (Australia), Santa Barbara International Film Festival (USA), Tribeca (USA), Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival (France) Anima 2018 (Belgium), and the upcoming screening at the 51st edition of Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia (Spain).

To see Two Balloons screen as part of the Animation Shorts at Kerry Film Festiva, head over top the following link: https://www.eventbrite. ie/e/animation-shorts-tickets