Red Sunday (1976), produced by the
Montana and North Dakota Historical Societies' Bicentennial Commissions, is a
30-minute documentary profiling the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25,
1876. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the battle. In the course of my research
into the battle in the past (see Aeolus 13 Umbra: The Mystery of the Little Bighorn Battlefield), I reviewed a lot
of documentaries and this one of the best. Using archival photographs, Native illustrations, location
footage, excellent writing, and narration provided by
John McIntire, an actor best known for his roles on The Virginian and Wagon Train,
all these elements combine to create a compelling narrative of the events that
led up to the battle.
The battle
itself was a disaster entirely of the U.S. government’s own creation. It wanted
the gold-laden Black Hills of Dakota, ceded to the Sioux in the Red Cloud treaty
of 1868 (following a war in which the United States lost). The Sioux refused to
sell the Black Hills, so in December 1875 the government issued an order for all non-reservation Natives living on ceded land, where they had a right to be, to return to their reservations by January 31, 1876, when the harsh Dakota
winter will have already settled in — provided word even got to all the tribes, which
was unlikely for the wildly scattered tribes living in their winter camps.
For people who traveled by horse and foot, this was impossible, and that was part of the plan. Any tribes who did not obey the command gave the government an excuse to declare the tribes hostile and use military force to compel them to return, no congressional approval needed. It was ethnic cleansing by administrative
fiat. Despite the Sioux and Cheyenne victory that day, the government eventually defeated the tribes, seized the Black Hills, and then carved the faces
of four presidents on it. For the Sioux, it was, and remains, a sacrilege.
In the wake of
the Civil Rights movement, the 1960s and 1970s were a time of revaluation of the
way we treated the Native American. Still, America then was split on how it regarded
George Armstrong Custer, with the tug between hero worship in the 1967 TV
series The Legend of Custer and insanity
in the 1970 film Little Big Man. While
the truth is often somewhere in between the two extremes, and 150 years of
research has brought us closer to the truth of what happened on June 25, 1876, the
last 30 minutes of the battle largely remains a mystery.
A relic from the gift shop at the battlefield.
I discovered
this film during my visit in 1990 to what was then still known as the Custer Battlefield
(since renamed the Little Bighorn National Battlefield). One can see the production
style that would later be reflected in Ken Burns’ documentaries, and the
writing, combined with John McIntire’s stentorian narration, captures the mystery
and legacy of the battle and comes together to create a powerful and sublime
ending.
Sheldon Renan (center, in tie) with fellow film buffs.
I first tracked
down Sheldon Renan regarding to his role as producer and writer for International Animation Festival, produced by KQED for PBS in 1975
and 1976. The series showed animated shorts from around the world, particularly
Europe (which I previously reviewed here).
Completely different than the menu of Saturday morning fare I was fed in the
1970s, the shorts were funny, but also intelligent, sophisticated, and
sometimes bizarre. It challenged my young mind and opened me up to a broader range of
animated creativity than what I saw on Saturday morning television.
Yet, while International Animation Festival holds a
special place for Renan, it is but one frame in a career that begins with
archiving Japanese film at the University of California at Berkley in the
mid-1960s, where he was director of the Pacific Film Institute, and then takes
off with writing an influential book on underground film, then sitting on the National
Endowment for the Arts media funding panel in 1970, followed by work for Apple,
AT&T, IBM, Intel, Sony, Xerox, and many more. He consulted with animation
and film companies and along the way also squeezed in scripts for Hercules, Xena, and Murder She Wrote,and, oh yes, directed the English version of
the ground-breaking landmark Japanese animated film Akira (1989).
If you’re an
anime fan I’m guessing I’ve got your attention now.
While I reviewed the International Animation Festival
in a previous article,
I wasn’t satisfied. Only one episode remains publicly available and there was little
information on the series. So much time had passed, I doubted I would find
anything; however, buried deep on the internet in a posting on a forum from
someone who asked if anyone remembered the series, Renan himself responded and
offered to answer any questions, even providing his email address. The post was
from 2016, and frankly I doubted I would get a response, but nothing ventured,
nothing gained.
About two days
later, I received a response from Sheldon from of all places, Zagreb, Croatia,
where he was traveling with his wife, and which, coincidentally, provided many
of the animated shorts for the International Animated Festival.
Renan’s enthusiasm for film is as infectiously passionate as it has ever been
over the course of his 60-plus year career.
In the course of
this wide-ranging interview, Renan not only answers crucial questions about the International Animated Festival, but
also takes us on a tour through 20th century film history, from his early years gathering the
most extensive collection of Japanese film in America, seeing the library he
worked at UC Berkeley get bombed in 1968, consulting with French film archivist Henri
Langlois — founder of the Cinémathèque Française, interviewing Andy Warhol (and
getting in a shoe fight with him), and encountering such personalities as Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, author and
illustrator Edward Gorey, among many others.
So, let’s roll
film and get started!
International Animation Festival, program #108, the only episode publicly available.
Aeolus 13 Umbra (Ae13U): After years of
searching for more information about International
Animation Festival, I was excited to see the Internet Archive files you posted in 2023 [Note: The post is credited to Renan]. How did you get a digitized
version of the episode, from contacts at KQED or your own personal archives?
Sheldon Renan: Well, the first thing is
that I didn't deposit any of that stuff. It was done probably by the Pacific
Film Archive. I was the director of the Pacific Film Archive at the time when
that show [International Animation
Festival] was done and the contracts that I wrote called for all of the
films to be donated to the University of California Film Archive . . . and they
have an arrangement with Internet Archive.
Sheldon Renan at the Pacific Film Archive.
Ae13U: Okay, that clears up one little
mystery. Another question I’ve been wondering about where the idea for the show
originated. Did it come from KQED or PBS itself?
Sheldon Renan: No. I had I had the
original idea . . . I had ended up being on the on the startup panel for the
National Endowment for the Arts Public Media panel and I had a special interest
in Japanese films, avant-garde films, and animation and I built the largest
collection of Japanese films in the world at the time.
Ae13U: Really?
Sheldon Renan: What had happened was
the Japanese companies had sent leases to the nisei market in the United States
[Note: The term “nisei” refers to
second-generation Japanese Americans born before and during World War II.]
And once they traveled that circuit, they had to either pay to destroy the
films or they had to pay to store them. I said, if they could give them to me
you could have them back anytime you want them and we'll take care of them, and
we did. They never did want them back.
We got to the
point where we had Japanese scholars coming over to Berkeley [The University of California at Berkley]
to study the history of Japanese scholars.
So, the first
thing I did was, it took me three years to raise the money to create a series
called TheJapanese Film [1975]. I got Ed Reischauer, the former ambassador to
Japan to be the host. I got Toshiro Mifune to be the guest host [Mifune introduced
the first film, Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro; actress Hideko Takemine, was
interviewed as part of the introduction to the ninth film, Mikio Naruse's When
A Woman Ascends The Stairs] and bit by bit, on that one, I kind of learned
how to produce television — the hard way! I was originally supposed to be the
executive producer, and Donald Ritchie [author
of The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, and many other books on Japanese film
and culture] was going to write it, but he'd never written broadcast
before, so, in the end, Ed Reischauer and I wrote the scripts and then we had the
guest experts.
The first day of
shooting, I wanted to be the director, but [Executive Producer] Zev Putterman said,
“You don't have any experience directing to speak of, so we assigned a director
[Rick Wise] to work with you.”
Well, the first
day of shooting, we were about to start shooting and the guy, the director, Wise,
turned to me and said, “I'm not very good with people. You direct with people
and I'll do everything else.” So, that's how I ended up directing.
Ae13U: [laughter]
Sheldon Renan: That series [The Japanese Film] was 13 roughly
two-hour sessions. It has a lot of impact in a strange way. One of the big fans
of the series was John Belushi and he used to put up a sign when it was being
broadcast in Chicago on Thursday nights that he was not to be disturbed — and especially a
film called Harakiri [1962], in
Japanese it’s called Seppuku, and it inspired his samurai character on Saturday
Night Live.
Harakiri (1962).
John Bellushi, in character for Saturday Night Live.
Ae13U: As soon as you said Belushi’s name,
I was wondering if there was a connection to that character.
Sheldon Renan: Yeah, that was the
connection.
The
Creation of an Animation Nation
Ae13U: So, it was 1975 when that series was
released, just about the time you began working on the International Animation Festival.
Sheldon Renan: As I was finishing that,
the filmmaking staff at KQED went on strike, and they said, “We want you to
finish the film series, but we don't want you to finish it here,” and they
loaded all of the materials into the back of my car and said, “Get out of
here.” I went down to LA and finished it myself.
[laughter]
As we were
finishing it, I had the idea of doing The
International Innovation Festival. I had a partner, a production partner, I
think it was Nat Katzman, who was the main person who did the programming for
the big stations, an expert, and he convinced me to buy Monty Python. I forget whether Monty
Python led to the International
Animation Festival, or the
International Animation Festival led to Monty
Python, but anyway, we were in the schedule. So, we ended up with 175
stations — which was a lot.
Ae13U: Back during its initial PBS run, I
recall watching the International
Animation Festival episode with the Terry Gilliam’s short, “The Miracle of Flight”
and having previously seen Monty Python
at the time, so the timing was spot on.
Where did the funding come for the series?
Sheldon Renan: It was funded by the
stations, from the station cooperative. About halfway through, I got a call
from the office — I was producing this thing basically out of my living room — and
the station said, “We need to talk to you about budget.”
And I said, “I've
been bringing things in under budget.” I said I brought The Japanese Film in 19 percent under budget. That was a half
million dollars production in 1975 [approx.
$3.2 million in 2026]. And I said, “I’ll bring this one in under budget.”
They said,
“Yeah, but when you bring it in under budget that means we have to send the
overhead [unspent money]back to Washington and we want that for
the station.” There was a long pause and finally the head of production at KQED
says, “Have you ever considered paying yourself more?”
[laughter]
Ae13U: Nice work if you can get it! It seems from very early on in your career,
archiving and preserving film was your focus.
Sheldon Renan: I’m absolutely nuts
about film. I basically had this idea that AFI [American Film Institute] was using all the money from the National
Endowment and spending it in Washington DC. Nothing was going to the rest of
the country. I had this idea of setting up regional film centers around the
United States. It became a program and archive was the first one, but they paid
me to travel to different cities. I helped them write their first grant
application and support them. All four of those original places I went to still
have an existing program.
Ae13U: When was that?
Renan at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Sheldon Renan: That was back in the
early 70s. The film archive opened up full time in the new building in January ‘71.
It was a great theater. Every row had a six-inch rise, so no matter how tall or
short you were you had a good view of the screen. It got to the point that
people would come to Berkeley to premiere their films — have it shown in that
quality environment and we also tried to get the same kind of quality
experience for public television.
So, what
happened was I used a couple of people who had a lot more experience with
animated shorts than I did. I had met a man by the name of Fran Sloan and he
had a program called Kinesis and he
was bringing in shorts from Europe. He arranged for me to get my first job in
film with Janus Films and that was to write the catalog that was the beginning
of the Criterion catalog.
Ae13U: Working at Janus Films to write what
became the Criterion catalog — incredible. Every film buff’s dream.
Sheldon Renan: I had this term that I
used for people who were like 24-hour-a-day film nuts. I called them the
Cinema Nostra, and I was one of those people.
From
the International Animation Festival to Akira
Sheldon Renan: The International
Tournee of Animation, which a guy named Prescott Wright was sending around the
country, was doing very well in my theater. So, I got the idea of doing the
same thing for a Public Television series. I went right from finishing
production on The Japanese Film and
right into the production of The
International Animation Festival.
The head of the
KQED station had the idea of using Jean Marsh as the host because she was
extremely popular with the great audience because of Upstairs, Downstairs. So I did two seasons with her — 13 and a half
hours.
International Animation Festival Promo with host Jean Marsh.
Ae13U: I always thought that was an
inspired choice for host. My mother loved Upstairs,
Downstairs, and although I was just 9 or 10 back then, whatever our parents
watched, we watched, so for PBS viewers she was definitely a familiar face. I
knew exactly who she was.
Sheldon Renan: She would go through the
narration that I would write and she would make me take out all the “littles”
and replace them with “small,” and the reason why is because she grew up
cockney and she was afraid of suddenly saying “lit’el.”
Ae13U: [laughter]She had such a proper “Received
Pronunciation” accent it’s hard to imagine. Getting back to the Internet Archive listing, it has a long
list of animated shorts that appear on the Internet
Archive listing for the International Animation Festival and the post is credited to you.
Les Brown, New York Times, June 18, 1974.
[Note: 13 episodes of the International
Animation Festival are stored at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, though not available for public viewing.]
Sheldon Renan: I don't know who put
that together. All of the films are in storage at the Pacific Film Archive.
When I started, it was called the University Art Museum — The Pacific Film
Archive at the University Art Museum. Then they changed the name of it to the
Berkeley Art Museum.
It was really
the audience which allowed us to build the film archive. I had the help of
Henri Langlois [founder of the Cinémathèque Française] and when Henri came
over, I went back in September of '68, Henri was in New York looking for allies
because the French government had thrown him out of the Cinémathèque because of
all the goings on in '68 [French
university protests], and that all started with the intellectuals
supporting Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque. He came out in Berkeley and he
brought the film to make the new film archive a sub-depository of the
Cinémathèque process to make me the representative for the Cinémathèque in the
United States.
Henri Langlois, left, and Sheldon Renan, right, at the Pacific Film Archive (copyright Steve Murez).
And he brought a
reel. You can see a picture of me holding the reel with Henri [see image above]. What he brought
to show me were 35-millimeter hand-colored Georges Melies shorts. Blew my mind!
[Note: These were special effects fantasy films “full of magical transformations,” with the coloring completed by nuns, according to Renan.]
Ae13U: I bet! Rare indeed.
Sheldon Renan: That was 1968, and the
first thing he gave me to show, which had never been shown in Berkeley, was L'Age d'Or, and a week later, somebody
bombed my theater and burned it down. Those were rough times in Berkeley.
Ae13U: The Internet Archive post notes 26 episodes were produced. Is that
correct?
Sheldon Renan: We did two seasons of
the International Animation Festival.
We tried to get money for a third. Jean [Marsh] didn't want to do a third
go-round, so we got Carl Reiner. He agreed to do it, but we didn't get funding
for the third season.
Ae13U: Any shorts from the International Film Festival stand out as
your favorites?
Sheldon Renan: You know, you can't ask
a film archivist for a favorite film. You have to ask them what are their
favorite 10,000 films!
Sheldon Renan: What I did was in June
of ‘75, I flew to Europe and went to all the different national film animation
companies and went to the International Animation Festival at Annecy [France],
where I met Terry Gilliam [Monty Python
animator and later director] and tried to sell him a joke. He said, no, the
whole point is we do the jokes ourselves [laughter], but in the end, I ended up
buying one of his films anyway. The place that provided the most films was
Zagreb [Zagreb Film].
Ae13U: A bit ironic that when I caught up
to you via email, you were in Zagreb at the time. Those were the films that
really challenged my young mind.
Sheldon Renan: [Croatian Animator] Nedeljko Dragić, in the program 108 [“Passing Day”].
He’s still alive. He’s 89 and still living in Zagreb somewhere.
When I went to
buy the films, Zagreb Films were busy planning on making a film about Tesla [Nikola Tesla]. Zelimar Matko, the head
of Zagreb Film, asked me to read the script. I said, the script is not pretty
good. I said, if this were for
Hollywood, they would make a film called Young
Tesla. So, on my birthday, June 29th, ’75, they locked me in an office
until I wrote a treatment.
[laughter]
[Note: Zagreb Film later produced The Secret Life of Nikola Tesla in 1980 with Zelimar Matko as the pre—production coordinator.]
I ended up being
hired to write a study of the animation industry for Polygram. George Lucas
asked for a copy of that study, and so did some other people, and they [Polygram] gave me permission to share it
with them. Anyway, I ended up getting hired to directly dubbing Japanese anime.
It started in a
strange way. It started with them borrowing my daughters to do the voices — I
have identical twin daughters — and it was at a studio where I had worked
before, so I knew the engineer and I knew how to run a recording session and the
guy who was the producer didn't really know . . . and I just took it over for
him and kind of done on time.
And then Michael
Haller hired me to direct the English version of Akira. [Note: Akira is the
landmark 1988 Japanese anime film regarded as one the best anime films ever
produced. Haller purchased the U.S. rights and did the English translation.]
Scene from Akira.
Ae13U: Akira?
Oh, my God! One of my favorite films and I have a copy. Sheldon, you definitely
just gone up a rank for me!
[laughter]
Sheldon Renan: Today, I went to a
laundry run by a hospital here in Zagreb, and the guy said, “Well, what did you
use to do before you retired?” And I said, well, it's a lot of stuff. I directed
anything.” He said, “Oh, what kind?” And I said, “Well, I directed Akira.” He gave me this huge hug!
Ae13U: [laughter] I’m sure a lot of fans
would react the same way. That is such an important film.
Sheldon Renan: Katsuhiro Ōtomo [Akira’s director and co-writer and a manga
artist], he sat behind me the first five days of the recording to see that
it was done right. He didn't say a single word for five days. Finally, I
realized he didn't speak English.
[laughter]
Ae13U: Well, it must have been pretty intimidating
nonetheless.
Sheldon Renan: As a result of that,
success of that, I did a lot of pilots and I also wanted to help the Japanese
animation industry get started in America. For example, The Castle of Cagliostro — basically, the 35mm print lived
under my bed.
Ae13U: Strange bedfellows indeed!
Sheldon Renan: I was asked to produce
and direct a new TV series that they [TMS
Entertainment] were doing with ITV in Italy, and I said, “What's the name
of the series?” They said it's called Sherlock
Holmes as a Dog.
I said, “No,
that's not the name.” They said, “Yeah, it's Sherlock Holmes as a Dog.”
I said, “Listen
to me, I'm an American. The name of the series is Sherlock Hound.”
They said,
“Okay, yes, but he's a terrier.”
Ae13U: Not anymore!
[laughter]
Sheldon Renan: And I did research and worked
as the development producer on Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland
and for the ABC seriesMighty Orbots. [Note:BothTMS Entertainment productions]. So, I did a little of this and a
little of that.
Ae13U: You certainly knocked around a
little, and racked up some pretty impressive credits while doing so! Beyond that
you were involved in the International Animation Festival, there's
like a lot of little threads here that pull in some related projects for film
and anime fans.
Sheldon Renan: Well, the person that the
show seems to have had a huge influence on was J.J.Sedelmaier. He's the guy who used to do all the animation
for Saturday Night Live.
[Note: Siedelmaier, in fact, discusses in the
influence of the International Animation Festival and how it led him to Sheldon
Renan in a Facebook post.]
Ae13U: All these years, I thought I was the
only one who was a fan, but after researching it I was pleasantly pleased to
see how many animation fans about my age still recall the series.
Sheldon Renan: There was a whole group of people for
whom that series gave them their education in animation.
Ae13U: And for that reason I wish the
series was available. It really is a college course on animation techniques and
storytelling.
Underground
Film, Andy Warhol, and Edward Gorey
If you have something to say, and only yourself
to satisfy, the limitations are your skill, the persistence of your vision, and
the availability of a little money. You may even destroy your work when you
finish; it is yours, but if you share it with others, so much the better. — Willard
Van Dyke, introduction to Sheldon Renan’s The Underground Film: An Introduction to its Development in America
Ae13U: While we still have time, I want to
touch on your first book, The
Underground Film.
The Underground Film (Amazon).
Sheldon Renan: It was published in ‘67.
What happened was I wanted to get started writing about films and I had a
friend, Steve Holden,
who was like a class poet in my class, and he was gay and he partied with Andy
Warhol and I wanted to interview Andy Warhol. So, I spent a day with Andy
watching him film his third sound film, Drunk
[akaDrink] with Emile de Antonio [American
film director and producer in a cast role], and then it was published in a
one-page article in a magazine that nobody read, distributed for free to
colleges, called Monitor.
I was doing another book on
advertising for a place called Chelsea House Press, and I showed him [HaroldSteinberg, Chelsea House publisher] the interview. He said, “You know, I think
I'd like to do a book about this guy. Nobody has done a book about Andy yet.”
So I said, “Well,
I'll give Andy your contact information and then he'll contact you.”
So, I didn't
hear anything. I gave it to Steve Holden, who was a friend of mine from college,
and he gave it to Andy and suddenly I got this call from Steve, Andy’s all
excited and that he thought it was best thing written about him. He put it in
his time capsule [Warhol’s personal
archive project] and he wanted me to write the book.
So, I very much was
just hanging out with him on a daily basis, but, in the end, I couldn't deal
with the sexual politics of the Factory.
Ae13U: Its reputation does precede itself.
Sheldon Renan: So, instead I wrote a
book which was called The Introduction to
the American Underground Film. It was the first film about the avant-garde
and also about the expanded cinema and getting into the move into computers and
to video.
The rights to
that were sold in 21 languages. It was published in Japan and Brazil. England, Australia, Canada. They did 100,000
copies in the US and last year, it was re-translated into Portuguese and
Portuguese again in Brazil — along with a picture of me and Andy Warhol and a bunk bed in my bedroom.
Ae13U: [laughter] That would be worth
checking out just for that!
At the Factory with Andy Warhol, center, and Sheldon Renan, far right. Also with actress/model Edie Sedgewick, far left, and next to her filmmaker/poet Gerard Malanga.
Sheldon Renan: I told my son, somewhere
there's going to be pictures of me having a shoe fight with Andy Warhol on a
bed. My son said, “Dad, is there something you haven't told us?”
[laughter]
Ae13U:
Too funny!
Sheldon Renan: At that time, it's just
. . . we were just around good people and a lot of them turned out to be
famous. When I did that first book on advertising, the guy in Chelsea House [publisher Harold Steinberg] said, “I
know a guy who he does all the Doubleday quality paperback covers and lay out
the book for $100,” and he said he's a little odd. So, he took me up to meet
him. It was July and it must have been 105 degrees in New York, and he warned
me that he [the artist] would be in a full length, clean skin coat. He came
down for the ballet season and so that's how my first book was laid out by
Edward Gorey.
Edward Gorey in one of his trademark coats. An animal lover, Gorey eventually stopped wearing them.
Ae13U: Edward Gorey! I absolutely love his work. I have a piece on my blog
about Edward Gorey’s cats, in his style. People love him. As soon as
I heard you say an artist wearing a “clean, skin coat” I thought that sounds
like Gorey! [Gorey frequently wore long fur coats.]
Sheldon, you've got a million stories, and
I wish we had time for all of them, but I think that is a perfect one to end up
on. You’ve been very gracious and I can’t thank you enough for helping preserve
some memories of the International
Animation Festival, and share some tales from your amazing career. Thank
you, sir!
I have previously
covered animation, such as Tale of Moonlight (1968) Soviet Animated Short Film and the animated short films
of the Emmy Award-winning NBC children’s series Hot Hero Sandwich, for which I was also able to interview one of its
animators, Al Jarnow, who created over a hundred short animated films for Sesame Street. For such a brief format,
creators combine visual imagery, sound, and develop story-telling techniques
that allow them to articulate their vision in a compressed format. Having the
skill to do all that is as much an art form as the actual art that results from
it.
While many of
the shorts that aired on the
International Animation Festival are available online, they lack the expert context that curated programs can provide.
That is why series like International
Animation Festival and The JapaneseFilm are important. Film, in a way, is another
language, and when the work is from another culture, we can better learn what
the artist has to say by listening to those who know the language.
In
his films, in his books on film, in his work in film preservation, in his
relationships with the movers and shakers in film, and in his passion for film,
Sheldon Renan has had something to say about film for six decades.
