A TOWN CALLED PANIC
Original Title: PANIQUE AU VILLAGE
Running Time: 75 minutes
Country of Production: Belgium
Year completed: 2009
Category: Feature Film / Animation Premiere: Cannes May 21, 2009
Original Language: French w/ English Subtitles
Format: 35mm / Colour Screenratio: 1: 2,35
Speed: 24 frames / Second Sound: DTS Digital & Dolby SRD
Number of Reels: 5 Footage: 2100m
Shooting Format: Stop Motion, Digital Nikon D1X camera
Director Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar
Original Title: PANIQUE AU VILLAGE
Running Time: 75 minutes
Country of Production: Belgium
Year completed: 2009
Category: Feature Film / Animation Premiere: Cannes May 21, 2009
Original Language: French w/ English Subtitles
Format: 35mm / Colour Screenratio: 1: 2,35
Speed: 24 frames / Second Sound: DTS Digital & Dolby SRD
Number of Reels: 5 Footage: 2100m
Shooting Format: Stop Motion, Digital Nikon D1X camera
Director Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar
SHORT SYNOPSIS:
Examined Life takes philosophy out of the darkened corners of academia and into the hustle and bustle of the everyday, a visual reminder that great ideas are born through profound engagement with the world around us.
Featuring the “rock star” philosophers of our time, including Cornel West, Peter Singer, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, Avital Ronell, Michael Hardt, Anthony Appiah and Martha Nussbaum.
Long Synopsis
UPCOMING SCREENINGS:
Cinematheque Winnipeg - March 4 & 5 @ 7pm, 2009
Cinema Village, NYC - Opens March 6 (1:15 PM 3:15 PM 5:20 PM 7:20 PM 9:20 PM)
Pacific Cinematheque - March 20 - 25, 2009
Cinema du Parc, Montreal, March 23 - 26 @ 9pm
Bytowne Cinema - March 22 - 25, 2009
Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon - March 9 - 12, 2009
Art Gallery of Hamilton - March 25, 2009
Cinecenta, Victoria - April 1 & 2, 2009
Cinema du Parc, Montreal - April 3 - 9
Regina Public Library, Regina, SK - April 4 & 5, 2009
Metro Cinema, Edmonton, April 18 - 20, 2009
View screenings in the United States, courtesy Zeitgeist Films!
View complete Showtimes for all films!
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS:
The Royal, Toronto - Opening Jan 23, 2009 - EXTENDED TO FEB 5th!
Friday @ 7, Saturday @ 7, Sunday @ 4:30 & 7, Monday @ 7, Tuesday @ 7 & 9:30, Wednesday @ 7, Thursday @ 7 & 9
(Panel follows Jan. 27, 7pm screening, on the intersection of public space & intellectual pursuits, featuring Astra Taylor, Jane Farrow, Deborah Cowen, Kanishka Goonewardena and Doug Hutchinson. Filmmaker Q&A on Sat, Sun & Mon.
Kingsway Theatre, Toronto: Jan 30 - Feb 5, 2009 - Nightly at 9pm - 2nd Theatre Added!
Regent Theatre, Toronto: Feb. 6 - 12, 2009
Western Arctic Moving Pictures Film Festival, Feb. 8, 2009 - 7pm
City Cinema, Charlottetown - Feb 11 - 15, 2009
Port Moody, B.C. Film Festival - Feb. 12 - 21, 2009
View complete Showtimes for all films!
Examined Life takes philosophy out of the darkened corners of academia and into the hustle and bustle of the everyday, a visual reminder that great ideas are born through profound engagement with the world around us.
Long Synopsis
UPCOMING SCREENINGS:
Cinematheque Winnipeg - March 4 & 5 @ 7pm, 2009
Cinema Village, NYC - Opens March 6 (1:15 PM 3:15 PM 5:20 PM 7:20 PM 9:20 PM)
Pacific Cinematheque - March 20 - 25, 2009
Cinema du Parc, Montreal, March 23 - 26 @ 9pm
Bytowne Cinema - March 22 - 25, 2009
Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon - March 9 - 12, 2009
Art Gallery of Hamilton - March 25, 2009
Cinecenta, Victoria - April 1 & 2, 2009
Cinema du Parc, Montreal - April 3 - 9
Regina Public Library, Regina, SK - April 4 & 5, 2009
Metro Cinema, Edmonton, April 18 - 20, 2009
View screenings in the United States, courtesy Zeitgeist Films!
View complete Showtimes for all films!
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS:
The Royal, Toronto - Opening Jan 23, 2009 - EXTENDED TO FEB 5th!
Friday @ 7, Saturday @ 7, Sunday @ 4:30 & 7, Monday @ 7, Tuesday @ 7 & 9:30, Wednesday @ 7, Thursday @ 7 & 9
(Panel follows Jan. 27, 7pm screening, on the intersection of public space & intellectual pursuits, featuring Astra Taylor, Jane Farrow, Deborah Cowen, Kanishka Goonewardena and Doug Hutchinson. Filmmaker Q&A on Sat, Sun & Mon.
Kingsway Theatre, Toronto: Jan 30 - Feb 5, 2009 - Nightly at 9pm - 2nd Theatre Added!
Regent Theatre, Toronto: Feb. 6 - 12, 2009
Western Arctic Moving Pictures Film Festival, Feb. 8, 2009 - 7pm
City Cinema, Charlottetown - Feb 11 - 15, 2009
Port Moody, B.C. Film Festival - Feb. 12 - 21, 2009
View complete Showtimes for all films!
SHORT SYNOPSIS:
Animated plastic toys like Cowboy, Indian and Horse have problems, too. Cowboy and Indian’s plan to surprise Horse with a homemade birthday gift backfires when they destroy his house instead. Surreal adventures take over as the trio travel to the center of the earth, trek across frozen tundra and discover a parallel underwater universe where pointy headed (and dishonest!) creatures live.
Each speedy character is voiced — and animated — as if their very air contains both amphetamines and laughing gas. With panic a permanent feature of life in this papier mâché town, will Horse and his girlfriend ever be alone?
INTRODUCTION:
A Town Called Panic is one of the rare full length animated films ever to secure the honor of a coveted slot in the Official Selection (in this case, Out of Competition) at Cannes. After René Laloux’s La Planete sauvage (Fantastic Planet) won a Cannes prize in 1973, it was three decades until a French-language animated feature made a splash: The Triplets of Belleville. Hollywood animation has found favor with the Festival in the 21st century, with Shrek and its sequel, as well as Over the Hedge and Kung Fu Panda receiving Cannes invitations.
Innovative French animated feature Persepolis (2007) and acclaimed Israeli animated feature Waltz with Bashir (2008) were accepted into the Competition and the 2009 Festival opens with 3-D computer-animated Up! A Town Called Panic holds the unique distinction of being the only stop-motion animated feature film ever chosen by the world’s most important international film festival.
It’s a frenetic comedy through and through, with an arrestingly original visual style and memorably silly voices to match. The inseparable Belgian duo of directors Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar – known as Pic Pic André in honor of the central characters
in their first popular hand-drawn cartoon — are the film’s hands on animators. In their studio on the outskirts of Brussels they put 1500 plastic toy figures through their mile-a-minute paces over the course of 260 days of production. The improbable but irresistible
adventures of the film’s plastic protagonists required as many as 200 “clones” per character, painstakingly animated to make a complex technique look as casual and spontaneous as children playing with their toys.
Famed in Belgium and internationally for the brand of absurd humor they’ve been purveying for over 15 years, Pic Pic André enjoy creating in an informal, family-style setting. For “Panic” is also a state of mind — some would say a state of being pleasantly OUT of one’s mind — shared by the members of La Parti (a production company created by Vincent Tavier, who produced and co-wrote the legendary Man Bites Dog.)
“Panic”, whose cast first appeared in acclaimed short films, follows the offbeat adventures of a dozen characters who happen to be generic plastic toys. Cowboy, Indian and Horse all live together across from their neighbors, Steven the farmer and his wife Jeanine. The directors were able to enlist a brand new character for the feature film: Madame Longray, a very sexy and patient mare who teaches at the local music conservatory. Adding to the
customary antics are a band of underwater creatures, up to no good whenever they drop in from their parallel universe.
Aubier and Patar were first inspired to animate Horse in an unsophisticated village setting when they were both students at the Belgian art academy in the eighties. The pair worked with eclectic paper cut-outs as well as hand-drawn animation when they hit on
the idea of moving stiff plastic toys through a stretch of countryside made out of cardboard. The “Panic” sensibility was born. Cowboy and Indian – perpetual specialists in creating havoc out of the most mundane occurrences — joined the cast and the village became the epicenter of frantic, relatively short episodes in which the gifted animators piled on dark, offbeat humor while imparting human emotions to cheap plastic toys.
“Panic” boasts a distinctive, easily recognized approach only its creators can provide: A cast comprised exclusively of ultra-basic but nostalgically evocative children’s toys, pleasingly bucolic settings disrupted by a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility, absurd dialogue and voice talents with such proudly silly delivery that there’s no mistaking this cartoon universe for anywhere else.
A Town Called Panic is also a cult TV series whose 20 memorably outrageous animated episodes were telecast in 2003 by Canal+ (in France and Belgium) prior to making their way around the world to festival acclaim and TV popularity (Nickelodeon, WDR, Canal+
Spain, etc.), eventually landing in the excellent hands of the folks at Aardman Studios, who handled the English dubbing.
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS:
Toronto International Film Festival, 2009 Read More!
Public 1, Ryerson: Sept 18 at 11:59pm (Midnight Madness)
Public 2, AMC 3: Sept 19 at 3:45pm
Press & Industry 1, Varsity 3: Sept 15 at 12:00pm
Cinefest, Sudbury International Film Festival, 2009
Saturday, September 26, Midnight
GIRAF Calgary's Independent Animation Festival presented by Quickdraw Animation
Sat. Nov. 7 @ 9:30 pm @ the Plaza Theatre (1133 Kensington Road NW), Calgary
Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema
Sat. Nov. 21 @ 11:30pm
Whistler Film Festival
Fri, Dec 4th 7:30pm - Village 8 - Theatre 7
Bytowne Cinema, Ottawa: Jan 29 - Feb 4, 2010
Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon: Feb 7 - 18
AMC, Dundas 24, Toronto: Opens Feb 19th
Fri: 1:40, 3:35, 5:35, 7:30, 10:05 Sat & Sun: (11:30 AM), 1:40, 3:35, 5:35, 7:30, 10:05 Mon - Thu: 1:40, 3:35, 5:35, 7:30, 10:05
Metro Cinema, Edmonton: Feb 26 - March 1
Revue Cinema, Toronto: March 16 - 18
Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver: Opens April 1
Regina Public Library: April 8 - 11
Grand Theatre, Sault Ste. Marie, Fri April 16, at 8pm
Park Lane Cinemas, Halifax (Film Circuit): April 19
Art Gallery of Windsor: April 22
Animated plastic toys like Cowboy, Indian and Horse have problems, too. Cowboy and Indian’s plan to surprise Horse with a homemade birthday gift backfires when they destroy his house instead. Surreal adventures take over as the trio travel to the center of the earth, trek across frozen tundra and discover a parallel underwater universe where pointy headed (and dishonest!) creatures live.
Each speedy character is voiced — and animated — as if their very air contains both amphetamines and laughing gas. With panic a permanent feature of life in this papier mâché town, will Horse and his girlfriend ever be alone?
INTRODUCTION:
Innovative French animated feature Persepolis (2007) and acclaimed Israeli animated feature Waltz with Bashir (2008) were accepted into the Competition and the 2009 Festival opens with 3-D computer-animated Up! A Town Called Panic holds the unique distinction of being the only stop-motion animated feature film ever chosen by the world’s most important international film festival.
It’s a frenetic comedy through and through, with an arrestingly original visual style and memorably silly voices to match. The inseparable Belgian duo of directors Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar – known as Pic Pic André in honor of the central characters
in their first popular hand-drawn cartoon — are the film’s hands on animators. In their studio on the outskirts of Brussels they put 1500 plastic toy figures through their mile-a-minute paces over the course of 260 days of production. The improbable but irresistible
adventures of the film’s plastic protagonists required as many as 200 “clones” per character, painstakingly animated to make a complex technique look as casual and spontaneous as children playing with their toys.
Famed in Belgium and internationally for the brand of absurd humor they’ve been purveying for over 15 years, Pic Pic André enjoy creating in an informal, family-style setting. For “Panic” is also a state of mind — some would say a state of being pleasantly OUT of one’s mind — shared by the members of La Parti (a production company created by Vincent Tavier, who produced and co-wrote the legendary Man Bites Dog.)
“Panic”, whose cast first appeared in acclaimed short films, follows the offbeat adventures of a dozen characters who happen to be generic plastic toys. Cowboy, Indian and Horse all live together across from their neighbors, Steven the farmer and his wife Jeanine. The directors were able to enlist a brand new character for the feature film: Madame Longray, a very sexy and patient mare who teaches at the local music conservatory. Adding to the
customary antics are a band of underwater creatures, up to no good whenever they drop in from their parallel universe.
Aubier and Patar were first inspired to animate Horse in an unsophisticated village setting when they were both students at the Belgian art academy in the eighties. The pair worked with eclectic paper cut-outs as well as hand-drawn animation when they hit on
the idea of moving stiff plastic toys through a stretch of countryside made out of cardboard. The “Panic” sensibility was born. Cowboy and Indian – perpetual specialists in creating havoc out of the most mundane occurrences — joined the cast and the village became the epicenter of frantic, relatively short episodes in which the gifted animators piled on dark, offbeat humor while imparting human emotions to cheap plastic toys.
“Panic” boasts a distinctive, easily recognized approach only its creators can provide: A cast comprised exclusively of ultra-basic but nostalgically evocative children’s toys, pleasingly bucolic settings disrupted by a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility, absurd dialogue and voice talents with such proudly silly delivery that there’s no mistaking this cartoon universe for anywhere else.
A Town Called Panic is also a cult TV series whose 20 memorably outrageous animated episodes were telecast in 2003 by Canal+ (in France and Belgium) prior to making their way around the world to festival acclaim and TV popularity (Nickelodeon, WDR, Canal+
Spain, etc.), eventually landing in the excellent hands of the folks at Aardman Studios, who handled the English dubbing.
PREVIOUS SCREENINGS:
Toronto International Film Festival, 2009 Read More!
Public 1, Ryerson: Sept 18 at 11:59pm (Midnight Madness)
Public 2, AMC 3: Sept 19 at 3:45pm
Press & Industry 1, Varsity 3: Sept 15 at 12:00pm
Cinefest, Sudbury International Film Festival, 2009
Saturday, September 26, Midnight
Sat. Nov. 7 @ 9:30 pm @ the Plaza Theatre (1133 Kensington Road NW), Calgary
Sat. Nov. 21 @ 11:30pm
Fri, Dec 4th 7:30pm - Village 8 - Theatre 7
Bytowne Cinema, Ottawa: Jan 29 - Feb 4, 2010
Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon: Feb 7 - 18
AMC, Dundas 24, Toronto: Opens Feb 19th
Fri: 1:40, 3:35, 5:35, 7:30, 10:05 Sat & Sun: (11:30 AM), 1:40, 3:35, 5:35, 7:30, 10:05 Mon - Thu: 1:40, 3:35, 5:35, 7:30, 10:05
Metro Cinema, Edmonton: Feb 26 - March 1
Revue Cinema, Toronto: March 16 - 18
Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver: Opens April 1
Regina Public Library: April 8 - 11
Grand Theatre, Sault Ste. Marie, Fri April 16, at 8pm
Park Lane Cinemas, Halifax (Film Circuit): April 19
Art Gallery of Windsor: April 22
Official Website: atowncalledpanic.com
