Cambridge Animation Festival 1983

13th – 18th September 1983

Britain’s only major forum of animation investigates propaganda, salutes America and showcases the latest British films.

The main theme of this year’s Cambridge Animation Festival is Animation and Persuasion and there will be seven programmes showing how animation has been used to persuade. These will begin with the war propaganda films and continue to show how animation is employed all over the world in a growing peace movement. There will be programmes of feminist films and a programme of the films of Polish animator Miroslav Kijowicz whose outspoken social films have frequently had problems gaining script approval but have, nevertheless, won him many major awards.

There will be two programmes of wartime films. The first, entitled OVER THE TOP, will begin with the Winsor Mccay classic THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA and other First World War silent propaganda films, both British and German. It will also include anti-Nazi films from the Forties and one pro-Nazi film made in Italy, DR CRURKILL. This film shows Winston Churchill as a Jekyll and Hyde monster out to destroy the worker for the sake of gold. The film ends with the gleeful destruction of London by bombs.

The second war programme BUGS BUNNY SIGNS UP includes many of the most tasteless animated films ever made. These are the anti-German and anti-Japanese films made in the American studios during the Second World War. Titles such as TOKIO JOKIO by Norman Mccabe for Warners and Friz Freleng’s BUGS BUNNY NIPS THE NIPS indicate the level of humour and the latter film has Bugs handing out hand grenades in Good Rabbit ice cream bars with the curt and racist “Here y’are, Slant Eyes”.

This latter film has not yet been confirmed for the Festival though Cambridge will be showing YOU’RE A SAP, MR JAB, a 1942 racist Popeye by Dan
Gordon, Frank Tashlin’s PLANE DAFFY, 1944, and one of the SNAFU series among others.

ODALISQUE
ODALISQUE. Maureen Selwood. America Salutes Cambridge. Women Draw Women.

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