International Animation Festival (1975-1976)

by G. Jack Urso

 

From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.

As a late Baby Boomer, growing up, my exposure to animation was a steady diet of Saturday morning cartoons by Warner Brothers, Hanna Barbara, Filmation, and a few others. While some classics were produced, there was a bland sameness about them that did little more than turn off our minds for a half hour or so. Then, in 1975, PBS aired the International Animation Festival, produced by KQED in San Francisco, and my cartoon world grew a little larger.

Hosted by Jean Marsh, who was then enjoying recognition in the United States for her role as co-creator and star of Upstairs, Downstairs, hosts the program, which aired 26 episodes from 1975 to 1976. I also recall seeing it rebroadcast on my local PBS station in 1978. This series literally blew my mind as a kid and allowed me to see animation as more than just a time-killer, but actual art. For decades, I searched the internet and the boxes of bootlegs at comic cons for the series but came up empty handed until about two years ago when the Internet Archive posted what is reported by them to possibly be the only remaining episode of the series, which is presented above from the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.

 

Additionally, I also dug up two other segments I remember that aired on the series. Bruno Bozzetto’s animated short Self Service is a surreal look at a day in the life of a mosquito.

From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.

This next short by Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, The Miracle of Flight, introduced me to the equally surreal humor of the British sketch comedy troupe, whose series also began airing in the United States in 1975. This short never aired on Monty Python, but the animation style and quirky take on history fit right in.

From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.

Unfortunately, just this one episode out of the 26 produced is available, though the Internet Archive reports four other episodes may be stored at KQED San Francisco, but not yet converted to a digital format. While certain segments aired on the series may still be available, as in the two clips shown above, some probably are not and not having all these short films available together in one place is a lost opportunity for educational and historical documentation purposes. Hopefully, more of these episodes, if they still exist, will be made available in the future.  Fortunately, a playlist of shorts that were played on the International Animation Festival is available on YouTube (click on previous link).

The International Animation Festival is just one example on how PBS exposed children to art from around the world that did more than just entertain, it also broadened young minds to a menu of possibilities beyond the same old diet of regurgitated ideas from the typical Saturday morning fare at the time. The programming of Saturday morning cartoon blocks has disappeared from the American tradition I grew up with — and probably for the best. In working with students, I see their interest in animation is far more diverse than what I had at their age. Yes, most of it is commercially orientated, but with affordable software tools, animators, young and old alike, can more easily give life to their vision and share it with the world.

Just like PBS did 50 years ago.

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The following list of confirmed and unconfirmed animated shorts is available from the Internet Archive’s listing for the International Animation Festival.   

• Cartoons from five different countries include a 1967 Oscar winner about Noah and the ark [The Box 1967], and a parody of life in the industrial age.
• Oscar-winning films from Yugoslavia and America and an innovative Canadian cartoon. [Includes Surogat/Ersatz from Zagreb Film, 1961]
• Included: “Self Service,” an Italian film about mosquitoes [Bruno Bozzetto]; and “The Shepherd,” an American cartoon about a sheepherder in a city.
• Walter Lantz's “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” [banned cartoon] and a Canadian cartoon about bandits who rob Santa Claus. [The Great Toy Robbery]
• A program of cartoons leaning toward the macabre includes “Homo Augens,” “The Spider” and “Mr. Hyde.”
• A 1911 cartoon by the French animation pioneer Emile Cohl and a 1974 Oscar winner utilizing animated clay figures. [Closed Mondays]
• An animated version of Edgar Allen Poe's macabre story “The Masque of the Red Death” (Zagreb 1969) and a tale about a mad baker.

[Presumably The Mad Baker (1974, Ted Petok)]

• A submarine kidnaps the Statue of Liberty, a pesky housefly won't stop growing, and insatiable humankind gets its just deserts in the program's three cartoons. 

[The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam: Part Two, by Dale Case & Robert Mitchell (1971), The Fly (aka Muha) (Zagreb 1967) Vladimir Jutrisa, Aleksandar Marks, and presumably La Faim (Hunger) - Peter Foldès]

• An all-Canadian program salutes the National Film Board of Canada. Cartoons include “Hot Stuff,” about the gods' gift of fire to man.
• Comedies from Hungary, Yugoslavia and Canada look at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a train ride and evolution.

[Probably the episode ending with Evolution, Michael Mills 1971, NFBC, possibly including The Last Station (l'ultima stazione) by Pavao Stalter]

• “Opera,” an Italian satire [Guido Manuli]; and “Bigger Is Better,” about the growth of a megalopolis
• The common man is the subject of cartoons from Poland (including the film “Tomorrow”), Hungary, Czechoslovakia and England.
• Cartoons about birds and flying from America's Walter Lantz, Soviet animators and England's Terry Gilliam. [“Miracle of Flight” (1974)]  Included: Woody Woodpecker as the “Barber of Seville.”
• Cartoons about a hot-tempered Italian driver, a daydreaming English couple and an American weight lifter. [Mr. Rossi Buys a Car]
• A film of a boy's nightmare about a land where everyone must smoke, a 1908 cartoon and an adaptation of an old song about a logger.[King Size (Kaj Pindal, 1968), Fantasmagorie (1908), The Frozen Logger]
• A cartoon based on James Thurber's “Many Moons,” a film about a clumsy magician and an abstract work.
• A 1962 Oscar winner about chance accidents and nuclear disasters [The Hole], and a film about life in a police state.
• Freedom is the subject of a Yugoslav short and a Czech tale about an artist in a totalitarian society. The program concludes with a 1936 commercial.
• A program honoring Yugoslavia's Zagreb Studios includes an interpretation of Balzac's “La Peau de chagrin.” [Šagrenska Koža 1960]

[Unconfirmed to also include Maxi Cat (Zlatko Grigić) and The Man Who had to Sing]

• Roberta Flack sings in a performance of “The Legend of John Henry” (1974); E.B. White narrates an animated version of his story “The Family That Dwelt Apart.”
• Walter Lantz's “Musical Moments,” starring Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda.
• “A Bird's Life,” about a housewife who literally takes wing to escape tedium; and “Sisyphus,” based on Greek mythology. [Hungary]
• A cartoon based on James Thurber's “A Unicorn in the Garden,” about achieving success, a Yugoslav animator's impressions of America.

[Jimmy Murakami's The Top (1966), and James Thurber's The Unicorn in the Garden (William T. Hurtz 1953). Also Zagreb Festival winner, Dnevnik/Diary (1974) by Nedeljko Dragić.]

• A 1960 Oscar winner about a 4-year-old draftee [Munro], and cartoons about exploding flowers and a character living in a one-dimensional world.
• [The Flower Lovers / Ljubitelji Cvijeća, Borivoj Dovniković-Bordo, Yugoslavia, 1970]
• “Puttin' On the Ritz,” a tribute to Fred Astaire; “Let's Keep a Dog,” or 11 reasons not to.
• Seven cartoons include playwright Eugene Ionesco's “Rhinoceros” [Jan Lenica 1965] and “The Critic,” a 1963 Oscar winner written and narrated by Mel Brooks.

Unconfirmed: The Selfish Giant (1971), Balablok (1973), Ian Emes' French Windows (1972), Room and Board (Randy Cartwright 1974), The Big Snit, Trade Tattoo (Len Lye), Great (Bob Godfrey UK Oscar winner 1975). “At least six MaxiCat cartoons were shown.”

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