Animation Nation

Max Horovitz (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman) has anxiety problems. Image from the Mary & Max website.

Singapore's annual Animation Nation 2009 festival finished this week. The Passengers managed to see two wonderful, whimsical features: Mary & Max and The Secret of Kells. The week of moving pictures was put on my the Singapore Film Society and hosted at the National Museum's (blogged here) lecture theater/cinema. The selections this year included cartoons from around the world and with varying tones of seriousness. Waltz with Bashir, animated recollections from Israeli soldiers, is definitely not a kids' movie, but the adventures of Brendan through the Irish wilderness in The Secret of Kells are a young boy's fantasy.

Aisling and Brendan explore the forest in The Secret of Kells. Guriguriblog has a great look at the film's Insular qualities.

Both of the films we saw arrived on a diplomatic platform. Mary & Max, a really touching story about unlikely pen pals writing from Australia and New York City in the 1970's, came to Singapore as part of the cultural outreach of the Australian High Commission, and the Irish HC actually sent a representative to introduce the Secret of Kells as we saw the film on the festival's opening night. The diplomatic missions to Singapore often play a visible role in the island's social/cultural scene. In part, this serves to bring a bit of home to the various ex-pat communities here, but these countries also want to promote themselves to encourage business and trade relationships with Singaporeans. Next weekend begins Berlin Dayz, courtesy of the German Embassy Singapore.

The cat Pangur Ban in The Secret of Kells gets his name from a Gaelic poem written by an Irish monk in the ninth century. More character sketches from the filmmakers here.

And did I mention The Secret of Kells weaves its tale around the creation of the famous Irish illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells, made around 800 CE? What could be better?