RYAN: THE WHOLE PICTURE

Sun 26 June
5.30pm
ACMI Cinema 2

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This may well be the ultimate animation fan’s program!

It looks at the current Academy Award winning film “Ryan”, a film which seamlessly merges stunning and unique style with a documentary narrative about a fragile, but prodigiously talented filmmaker, one Ryan Larkin. The program also screens the only four films that Ryan Larkin ever made and lets us judge them on their merits and with the benefit of hindsight. And it gives us an opportunity to take another look at some more recent films by the maker of “Ryan” – Chris Landreth – who has done as much as anybody to develop the software package known as Maya into the powerhouse of digital animation creation that it has become.

The whole program will be introduced by our very special guest, Steve Hoban, the producer of “Ryan”.

Where to begin? There are several converging histories on show in this program…….

Ryan Larkin
Ryan Larkin was born in Montreal in 1943. His eye for simply capturing the minute details of the way people (especially himself) moved was his core inspiration and he was widely regarded as a master at it. As an animator for the National Film Board of Canada, he created a grand total of four films between 1964 and 1972. Ryan’s was not an easy life and despite (or perhaps because of) widespread recognition including an Academy Award nomination, Ryan Larkin turned his back on animation and has spent the last 20+ years living as a homeless person panhandling for change on the streets of Montreal.

Maya
Maya has become an absolutely ubiquitous CG animation tool. It seems to appear in the credits of most of the digital films that MIAF receives and is one of the main creative systems employed in many motion pictures – both in fully animated films and in the creation of special effects for live action features. One of the more significant events in Maya’s path to domination was the creation of a film that both tested the programs’ boundaries to the fullest and also served as a convincing showcase of Maya’s incredible flexibility – that film was “Bingo” and it was created by Chris Landreth.

Chris Landreth
The Canadian animator Chris Landreth is truly one of Maya's and, indeed, computer animations’ pioneers. One of his earlier films “The End” set a new benchmark for the burgeoning field of CG animation when it was released in the mid 1990s. When he was commissioned to take a new software system named Maya and use it to make a film and at the same time develop its capabilities, he gave the world an early CG masterpiece named “Bingo” – a fascinating and bizarre film based on a Dadaist piece of theatre. Again, the bar had been raised. Fast forward to 2004, and Landreth launches his latest Maya masterpiece, “Ryan”. Utterly unique in its style, compelling in its documentary narrative path and affecting in its insights into the complex life of its subject, “Ryan” has changed people’s views about what animated films can do. For more information check out this great link - http://www.alias.com/eng/etc/mayamasters/masters/chris_landreth.shtml

This program brings all of these threads together and plays them back to back. The ‘ring master’ who will help us understand more of what we are seeing is Steve Hoban, the producer of “Ryan” who has traveled from Montreal to host this screening.

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Steve’s visit has been generously supported by the Canadian Consulate General’s Office in Australia.

Admission is restricted to 18+
IMPORTANT: Film classification regulations do not allow us to admit any person under the age of 18 years EXCEPT to the Kids Animation and Ub Iwerks Short Films Collection.