Spark Animation turns 10 with 100-film lineup
Poignant remembrance of Stanley Park Zoo a highlight
If you are 30ish or older and spent time in Vancouver, you probably remember the polar bear exhibit in the Stanley Park Zoo.
The sight of a constantly weaving Tuk — in a concrete pit that looked more like a sad water park in a 1960s Brutalist Soviet Union tower block than an icy coastline of the Arctic Circle — is probably one of those childhood memories which when reflected upon is actually quite sad.
Vancouver filmmaker Julia Kwan clearly remembers going to the zoo as a kid and watching Tuk, who was put to sleep in 1997 four years after the zoo actually began to shut down and the other animals were shipped out. Tuk stayed put because at 37 years of age he was too old to be moved.
“I remember making these excursions to Stanley Park as a kid. It was really exotic,” Kwan said. "Of course now I have ambivalent feelings about zoos but as a child it really filled my imagination to be that close to animals. It really gave me a lot more respect for animals.”
That imagination is behind Kwan’s new short animated film The Zoo, produced by the National Film Board. Kwan’s first animated film will have its world premiere at the Spark Animation 2018 festival. A showcase of animated movies (short and feature), the Vancouver event is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a roster of 100 or so films over its Oct. 25-28 schedule. There is also a strong line up of conference events to choose from.
Kwan — who is best known for her exceptional 2005 feature film Eve and the Fire Horse and the 2014 documentary Everything Will Be — enlisted the help of Jester Animation and animator Jesse Cote to help bring her vision to life. The result is a 10-minute 2D cut-out animation film that is sweet and melancholy.
In it the bear, known as Kut, is captured after his mother is shot by Inuit hunters and brought to Vancouver. He is put on display and watched by thousands of people, one of those being a local Chinese boy. The boy grows old along with the bear and sadly shares feelings of isolation.
Through this parallel Kwan poses the question: how much do we value the aged and our own history?
“I was thinking about abandonment and the things that are left behind. It is that sense of abandonment and loss and what we value,” Kwan said, about her film’s heart.
Kwan said she felt like she was paying back the bear Tuk for all the hours he gave her as a kid and an “unemployable,” film school graduate who hung out in the park.
The Zoo is Kwan’s first animated film. It’s a genre she said was a bit bewildering.
“I felt like a dying bear sometimes while doing this,” Kwan said about the process of working in such an unfamiliar milieu. "Working in animated film is polar opposite (to live action). It was so controlled. The whole process was very challenging for me. It was a learning experience, for sure. Ultimately I am very proud of it. It is the bear I saw in my head.”
Kwan is thrilled her animated short got the nod to join the Spark lineup. A veteran of other festivals, she says the festival experience can be really encouraging for a filmmaker.
"It is a celebration of the art of animation. I’m really looking forward to meeting other animators, filmmakers and talking about the process,” Kwan said. “It is like any niche festival.
“It’s the sense of community that is so important. The connecting with other people that have the same passions, it’s really important,” added Kwan, who is developing a couple of features and a TV show. “I have continuing friendships with people I have met on the Asian film festival circuit, for years. It’s the icing on the cake. The opportunity to connect with the audiences is also great. People come up to you afterwards and express whatever they need to express to you.”
Kwan’s film is part of Spark’s Made in Canada program of 26 films.
The festival is packed with plenty of choices as it is wide ranging in style and scope. It’s also worth noting that the proceeds from the film ticket sales go to Covenant House Vancouver.
“Our mandate really is to share animation with local community,” Festival Director Marina Antunes said. “We try to balance the festival with a combination of traditional and modern animation. We also try to infuse a little more creative side. Things you might not see regularly. So we have a lot of experimental film as well. Basically our mandate is to be inclusionary so we try to have a good break down of films from people of colour from different places around the world and from women.”
The women’s filmmaking program Mothers of the Medium has 17 films in its line up this year.
New to the festival is the stop-motion program. That new heading is the direct result of the huge pool of 700 submitted films — the most ever — the festival had to draw on.
The festival opens Oct. 25 with an evening of awards and film presentations. Highlighting the latter is the absolutely fantastic Animal Behaviour from Alison Snowden & David Fine and Ann Marie Fleming’s A Short Film About Tegan & Sara.
The evening also includes another 13 films as well as the lifetime achievement award being handed out to Fourtime Academy Award winner Nick Park of Aardman Animations, a.k.a. he of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep fame.
Park, a stop motion master, will return to the festival on Oct. 28 for an onstage discussion with Fine.