London Animation Club is delighted to welcome back stop-motion visionary Joseph Wallace for a screening of his films at the Garden Cinema.

Details: Saturday 19th July at 5.30 pm at the Cinema 39-41 Parker Street, London WC2B 5PQ

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Welcome to London Animation Club

London Animation Club is a monthly event for animators and people interested in animation in the capital, created and curated by Martin Pickles.

Club members and regular guests meet and present their work in informal surroundings conducive to talking and sharing ideas. Our guests range from well-known figures, such as Phil Davies, the producer of Peppa Pig, and Peter Firmin, the co-creator of Bagpuss, through to award-winning independent animators like Emma Calder, along with experimental filmmakers and academics, with much in between

The regular events take place at the Green Man, 36 Riding House Street W1W 7EP and special events at the Garden Cinema, 39-41 Parker Street WC2B 5PQ.

The audience at our special Emma Calder retrospective at the Garden Cinema on 1st March 2025

London Animation Club at the Green Man, as visualised by Dennis Sisterson. Left to right: Francesca Pich, Catherina Rowland, Mal Hartley, Tom Lowe and Emma Calder.

Philosophy:

“I think it’s very essential that artists meet other artists… and we can have a good moan together.”

– Bob Godfrey, 2006

 Some Images:

Animators’ Zoom Party, 15th June 2020

Our last “live” event before Lockdown, at The Green Man W1, 2nd March 2020

Hearts Loop created for London Animation Club by Steven Woloshen (2016)

LACers Martin Pickles, Una Marzorati, Philip Green, Rosemary Norman, Stuart Pound, Steven Ball, Kate Jessop and Ben Fox at the Turbine Festival, Tate Modern, 25th July 2015. Photo by Esther Johnson.

Linda McCarthy has a long association with London Animation Club, having first visited us in February 2013 when she presented a selection of her films along with her cousin, the cartoonist Stephen Appleby.

Linda specialises in stop-motion animated films. She has made and exhibited ceramics, written and performed marionette shows and is now writing and making animated films. After graduating from Glyndŵr University in 2007 she formed her own animation company, Tiny Elephants. Linda is currently collaborating with Steven Appleby in making a series of films adapted from Steven’s cartoon strip, Small Birds Singing.

More information at https://www.tinyelephants.co.uk/

PERILS OF PERESTROIKA PART 2:

Animated video from Soviet Union 1985-1991

Online event via Zoom, 19th July 2021

Riitta Hakkarainen and Jude Cowan Montague returned as guest curators and presenters of this event, the second in a series. We were joined by special guest Andrei Svislotski live from California.

Here is a recording of the live stream:

SCREENING PROGRAMME

1. Hypnerotomachia (1992) directed by Andrei Svislotski, Pilot Studio

Hypnerotomachia ‘Fight of Love in Dream’ is loosely based on an allegorical renaissance novel Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, where Poliphilo pursues his love, Polia, through a dream landscape.  This surreal animation is a tangle of interpenetrating fantasies of a sleeping man and a woman. 

2. The Story About Matvey Kuzmich (1990) directed by Olga Rozovskaya, Soyustelefilm

Subtitled by Riitta Hakkarainen

A visceral clay animation about a day in a a kolhoz  – a collective farm in the Soviet Union – both ordinary and exotic. An absurd parody on films of soviet worker heroism happening in a muddy backwater of Soviet Russia, with guests that include an elephant and a TV crew. An immersive piece in which the audio is an important part of the experience.

3. Midnight Games (1991) directed by Rinat Gazizov, Pilot Studio

An imagining might be happening at night while we sleep. The frivolous drawing style adds to the uncanny fast paced action. Surreal, witty transformations to music.

4. Breakfast on the Grass (1987) directed by Priit Pärn, Tallinnfilm

Four overlapping stories of people struggling in Soviet everyday life with poverty, corruption and shortages and the ways they try to overcome their difficulties. This extraordinary animation was only possible in the retracting of communist enforcement of social rules during the perestroika and was made in Estonia. It’s a critique of both capitalism and communist society, with satire of both sides of the iron curtain, its unique style inspired other animators working in Perestroika times.

Priit Pärn also recorded a special introduction for his his film. Many thanks to him and to Olga Pärn for recording it.

Queer Animation at London Animation Club: Kate Jessop and Leo Crane, Monday 3rd June 2019

Kate and Leo, 3rd June 2019

Kate is a multi award-winning animation filmmaker who has exhibited extensively internationally including representing the UK in the Best of Women and Film in TV, being a Virgin Media Shorts finalist and Berlinale Talent Lab participant. She is the creator of Tales From Pussy Willow: an edgy, poignant comedy series that cleverly picks out both funny and shocking elements of homophobia, misogyny and contemporary British life.

Leo is an award-winning animator who combines traditional fine art techniques with expert digital skills. He produces and directs independent short films for cultural organisations, festivals and exhibitions. He collaborates with other artists and film makers in animation and technical production and has worked on commercial projects across consumer, construction and creative industries.

We had a very healthy 25 people at the last London Animation Club event on 4th September. Talking of healthy, though, I was quite ill with the shivers and shakes but I managed to come in with a DVD player. But we had quite a few new people, which was marvellous.

I was delighted to have Captain Zip (AKA Philip Munnoch) as our featured artist, who showed an array of his 8mm films which have been featured in other films and television programmes in 2012. Like a good wine, Captain Zip’s late 1970s films of punks on the King’s Road (and in his flat, as we discovered) are just reaching maturity now. Although Zip is not an animator, his independent filmmaking style and philosophy make him an apt screener at London Animation Club. He showed work twice at our old home at the Coach And Horses in Soho: this was his first show at the Green Man.

Visit his YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/captainzipvideotrip?feature=results_main

and you can see him introducing his work here: