Ass-Kicking Student Film? Oh yeah….

Chris Robinson is the curational wizard at Ottawa Animation Film Festival, as well as does quite a bit of professional writing. One of his moonlight gigs is to be the curmudgeonly Animation Pimp, with a regular byline in Animation World Network online magazine. Although he wasn’t as into my newest film, my student film “Grace” made the grade (it won the Student Grand Prize at Ottawa Animation Fest in 1998.) I just came across this article of him talking about the most “ass kicking student films over the last 20 years.” And there’s “Grace,” kicking ass, it seems. Nice.

No matter how many prizes, accolades, interviews, or millions any of us get in our careers as filmmakers, we all started at the humblest of beginnings, at zero. We were all students or apprentices to our art before we became masters. But in all of the most successful of us, there was even back then, in our beardless youth, the shimmering foreshadowing of future success. Some of the most promising of student works reminds us that our student films can be our most liberating expressions, and can be harbingers of greatness to come. And they’ll remind us of where some of the best ideas and talents have always come from; the gloriously fecund creativity of young artists.

Here’s a wee Pimp tribute to some of the most ass-kicking student films from the last 20-ish years.

from AWN.COM, The Animation Pimp: The Kids Eat It Up, Chris Robinson Aug 22, 2014

 “Grace was my Cal Arts MFA thesis film done in the Experimental Animation department. It was the most transformative and demanding art experience I’d ever had up until that point. I dove really deep down for it, exhausting myself, my bank account, as well as my friends. I did ridiculously crazy things just to “get that shot just right.” The resulting work did relatively well at the festivals, allowing me to gain attention and to meet all kinds of like-minded people. It also answered my own question as a younger artist, that I could find my own private vocabulary of expression in my art, and still be able to communicate meaning to others. I found that I love teaching animation, as my relationship to this art form is so much more about the intimate expressiveness rather than the commercial uses of it. And best of all, I’m still making my own films, with one just about finished.” Lorelei Pepi