Drawings move, paintings come to life and puppets take the stage, one painstaking frame at a time.
![Lost Property Office](/assets/resized/sm/upload/1i/kp/am/g0/Lost%20Property%20Office%20-%20Daniel%20Agdag%20KEY-0-1600-0-900-crop.jpg?k=39b353d4e6)
![Strange Case](/assets/resized/sm/upload/21/9x/7q/x9/Strange%20Case%20-%20Zbigniew%20Przypadek-0-960-0-450-crop.jpg?k=2a942ecdef)
![After All](/assets/resized/sm/upload/of/u0/0o/xn/After%20All%20-%20Michael%20Cusack-0-960-0-450-crop.jpg?k=c72fa0abce)
Animation NOW! Handmade
Some animators just want to see their drawings move, their paintings come to life and their puppets take the stage. To these animators – and they are legion – animation is very much a hands-on medium created with the most physical of materials. They simply know no other way. This programme is our annual tribute to the very best of these works. In them resides a passion to create with one’s own hands and a heroic patience sufficient to build a world and tell a story, one painstaking frame at a time.
Michael Cusack’s After All infuses a poignancy into his puppets that bounces unpredictably like a pinball between gallows humour and the reality of life’s most fundamentally irreducible truth. No less bracing, Anita Lester’s I’m Still Alive treads a similar set of boards but with a deeper, wider history seeping into it. And we simply could not resist opening with the brand-new, Oscar-nominated marvel Negative Space. By Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata, it’s a beautifully rendered study in the simple magic of animation’s ability to find, and depict, beauty in the simplest of ideas. — MT
Negative Space 2017
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There is a beautiful and precise artform to packing a suitcase – and as we all know, art transcends science.
The Battle of San Romano 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/ul/gd/2g/ma/The%20Battle%20Of%20San%20Romano%20-%20Georges%20Schwizgebel-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=d02364601c)
Master animator Schwizgebel brings his magic to this adaptation of the Paolo Uccello triptych depicting an infamous 15th century battle outside Naples.
Still Alive 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/hu/ca/ez/rl/I'm%20Still%20Alive%20-%20Anita%20Lester-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=b77ee0a20e)
A moving, superbly crafted film tribute to Eva, a woman who emerged alive but forever broken by her experiences of the WWII death camps.
Deyzangeroo 2017
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Deyzangeroo is a ritual performed in the fishing town of Bushehr to ward off evil spirits and take back the moon. It works every time.
Silent London 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/ba/5y/g4/da/Silent%20London%20-%20Ivelina%20Ivanova-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=07ce18b77d)
A visual ode to the grabbed, found and overheard sounds of London, delivered in an intensely rendered water-coloured canvas.
Travelogue Tel Aviv 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/y4/b0/se/l7/Travelogue%20Tel%20Aviv%20-%20Samuel%20Patthey-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=4be8ab0b88)
A diverse, animated visual journal of the varied sights and sounds of Tel Aviv as seen through the eyes of an urban explorer.
Evening 2016
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Time for a clean-out. Everything must go. The race is on.
After All 2016
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/i6/76/j7/st/After%20All%20-%20Michael%20Cusack-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=0639cfe3ba)
A poignant, sometimes hilarious look at the inevitable journey a middle-aged man must make in coming to terms with the loss of his mother.
An Echoing Memory of a Tongue 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/2f/2j/ng/1q/An%20Echoing%20Memory%20Of%20The%20Tongue%20-%20Arash%20Akhgari-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=22480c878f)
Words are just sounds that we have ascribed meaning to. But words are finite; the sounds we can generate are probably not.
War Marks 2017
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In a world on a constant war footing, the power of beauty and the need for permanent vigilance constantly intertwine.
Strange Case 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/t0/al/rw/xg/Strange%20Case%20-%20Zbigniew%20Przypadek-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=f6b01fa723)
A bold, breathtaking, painterly film streaming images, thoughts and memories of random experiences.
Lost Property Office 2017
![](/assets/resized/sm/upload/ra/yd/nl/rc/Lost%20Property%20Office%20-%20Daniel%20Agdag%20KEY-0-640-0-360-crop.jpg?k=d5781c7f53)
A clerk at a lost property office is faced with unexpected change, and plans an unconventional response