“World of Animated Film” Highlights International Standouts: Review

Finding The Animation Atlas: The Ghibliotheque Guide to the World of Animated Film in my local library’s catalogue, I had two notions as to what it was about. Either it was a guide to Studio Ghibli’s masterful works, or it was an atlas about the locations of films. “Here’s three animated films set in Connecticut,” that sort of thing.

Neither was accurate, but the book was a delight.

Written by the hosts of the Ghibliotheque podcast, the book takes a look at how diverse and varied the world’s animation output is. Familiar films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or the Wallace and Gromit series are joined not only by acclaimed recent works like Loving Vincent, a film emulating the art style of Vincent Van Gogh by using thousands of actual oil paintings and films from Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon like Secret of Kells, but also obscurities.

Perhaps my favourite is Le Roi et l’Oiseau from France, The King and the Mockingbird. Production started in the 1940s, and an unfinished cut was released in 1952. That’s a long span by itself, but work restarted in the 1970s, with release in 1980. The opening passage tantalizingly notes:

In 2014, the British Film Institute donated a collection  of 35 celluloid drawings to the Cinémathèque Française. They had been found, decades before, in a box on the side of the road by a passer-by.

They offer rich, condensed looks at dozens of films, and what it took to bring them to screens. It’s a fantastic buffet of animation alternatives, when you want something a little different than what Disney has to offer. You’ll know some of the stories, but authors Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham bring fresh, easy to read articles on all the films and creators featured.

A copy of this book was borrowed from the Brampton Library for review.