After two years of producing a virtual format during the Covid-19 pandemic, Cartoons Underground is back with a one-day in-person event for its 11th edition! The festival will be held on 22 October 2022 at at Projector X: Picturehouse cinema.
Cartoons Underground is Southeast Asia's largest animation festival. This year, it attracted 1,681 entries submitted from 96 different countries, which is the highest number of submissions received during the festival's 11-year run. 16 animation works have been specially selected to be screened during the event, followed by a Director Q&A, and a celebratory music-pumpin' afterparty.
Did you notice the many cats in the Cartoons Underground is banner? The drawing is by this year's festival artist Sarah Lim, a Yale-NUS graduate with a degree in Life Sciences and a minor in Arts and Humanities. Sarah scored an internship with Finding Pictures after attending animation courses for 2 years. She was then involved with prop and character design for their latest TV series, Puberteens, and is now eager to tell more stories through animation and art.
It is Cartoons Underground's 10th Birthday this year! To celebrate this joyous occasion, South-East Asia's biggest independent animation festival has expanded to a 7-day event from 20 to 27 November 2021. It will run as a hybrid event, with both in-person and virtual segments.
Cartoons Underground, the brainchild of Singaporean festival director Vicky Chen and celebrated American animator Patrick Smith, launched a decade ago with just a 2-hour animated movie screening session. Through the years, as interest for animation grew, the event included workshops and panels, as well as the annual Golden Durian Awards for excellence in animation. It was boosted to a 5-day virtual event last year, despite of restrictions due to the pandemic.
This year's National Day has shown the kind of magic our homegrown indie animation studios can do, so the festival provides a great opportunity to give them more exposure. Not only that, Cartoons Underground offers opportunities to connect animation art students - most who come from NTU and LASALLE - to the industry's professionals.
“We always believed Singapore had this huge potential to be a hub for independent animation for the entire region,” she says. “When we launched Singapore was trying to tempt the big international studios. But it’s the independent studios that have stayed and ten years on we’re seeing more and more people buying into our vision,” says Vicky Chen.
Cartoons Underground 2021 will still centre on the screening of new animated short films. The screening helps to showcase and introduce an eclectic range of animation films to local and global audiences. These films are in contrast to the easily marketable styles by Disney or Dreamworks, or even some anime, that many are already familiar with.
Included in the festival programme are two international competitions. One of the notable entries for the international competition is The Visit by Morrie Tan (LASALLE College of the Arts BA(Hons) Animation Art), an intimate stop-motion story about a girl and her thoughts whenever she visits her father in prison. Red Dot Diva first watched The Visit as part of the seven animated short film anthology Spectrum, which was co-produced by Singapore-based Robot Playground Media and Malaysia’s The R&D Studio. The Visit draws you in with quiet emotion, and the film has already received awards and is currently in the film festival circuit.
Tan Wei Keong, Programme Director of Cartoons Underground, also recommends checking out other entries, like Canada-based director Liza Desyatkova'sDon't Think About Her. “It magnifies the agony of having a crush on someone and I love it that the director pushed the film over the edge to a laugh-out-loud effect,” Tan says.
There will also be a screening of films from students at Singapore’s NTU and LASALLE. In addition, the anniversary celebration will provide a nostalgic throwback of some of the very best films shown at Cartoons Underground over the last decade, including those by Singapore creators Sarah Cheok's The Growth and Davier Yoon and Joshua Tan's witty A Brief History Of Time. Incidentally, the latter is one of Tan Wei Keong's favourites.
“It's a joy to rewatch it a million times,” he says. “I always discover something new in the process. It's a gem in the local animation scene, so it's the perfect short to open the retrospective program.”
The expanded programme also includes three online panels about careers in animation. They are:
Developing the animation industry: The role of education (23 Nov, 8pm) looks at how Singapore’s animation industry can bring on the next generation of talent.
Beyond Animation: What’s next for creative graduates? (21 Nov, 2pm) brings together animation graduates who’ve built successful careers.
Future of monetizing in animation (25 Nov, 8pm) looks at the ways the new digital economy lets animator make money from connecting
directly or indirectly with audiences.
On this weekend and next weekend, Cartoons Underground 2021's partner *SCAPE is hosting a four-day development lab on-site and providing Zoom webinars on topics including Non Fungible Tokens on Animation. On the last day of the festival (27 November, 1 PM SGT), *SCAPE Gallery will be hosting a limited in-person screening of animated movie TATSUMI. The film about Japanese manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi, was directed by local auteur Eric Khoo.
“Ten years really flies by when you’re having fun,” says Festival Director Vicky Chen. “Cartoons Underground really has been a labour of love. But seeing the reaction of audiences, following young animators as they embark on their careers, and watching indie animation really take root in Singapore is awesome payback for everything the CU team puts in.”
Tickets for Cartoons Underground 2021 is already on sale! To view the animation films and panels online, buy your ticket from this link - https://cartoonsunderground.com/ticketing-2021
So what if COVID-19 a.k.a. the Big Bad of 2020 is still lurking in the corners of Red Dot Island, and has prevented festivals and events from taking place? Cartoons Underground 2020, the island's very own animation festival, has in fact expanded from a 1-day evening festival to an exciting 5-day online event from 9 to 13 December 2020.
Of course, the festival, which is also South-East Asia's largest, will not be happening in their usual physical venue. Instead, attendees will step into an interactive and vibrant 360° virtual world created by CG lead Enrique Caballero.
Love is in the air
Within this immersive neon-lit cyberpunk 'hood, festival goers will be able to hunt for easter eggs, view films and behind the scene footages, and attend Q&A sessions with directors. Red Dot Diva had a sneak peek of the 360° world, which had tributes to Lady & The Tramp as well as the chef couple from the movie, Ratatouille. According to Enrique Caballero, he felt that during this difficult year, we all needed more love. Since the locals love shopping online, there will also be an art market where you can buy unique items for your own collection or as presents.
While the pandemic continues to rage on in several parts of the world, live action TV and movie productions have either halted or have been delayed. But as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. Seemingly pandemic-proof, the animation industry is set to boom in the next 5 years due to market demand, and for the practical reason that most of the work can be performed remotely.
Red Dot Diva welcomes the rise of animation movies. They are not just for kids and children. There are the cookie-cutter Disneys, Pixars, Dreamworks and well-loved Studio Ghibli films, and then there are so many others that fall in between or out of those familiar lines that are as beautiful and moving.
