NATIONAL — all episodes — Fantasy/Animation

Episode 119 - Arab Animation (1937-2015) (with Omar Sayfo)

Special guest Dr Omar Sayfo joins Chris and Alex for Episode 119 of the podcast, which features a rundown of Arab Animation covering a range of cartoons from Egypt, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, alongside a discussion of Omar’s recent book Arab Animation: Images of Identity (2021). Omar is an Affiliated Researcher in the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University, and a researcher at the Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, who has published articles in animation: an interdisciplinary journal, Media Industries Journal and The Journal of Popular Culture, as well as chapters in a number of edited collections.

Episode 102 - Mothra (Ishirō Honda, 1961) (with Alex Davidson)

Chris and Alex take their first visit to the Japanese kaiju genre for Episode 102 of the podcast thanks to Toho studio’s 1961 feature Mothra (Ishirō Honda, 1961), a film that kickstarted the longstanding Mothra monster movie franchise.

PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantJuly 25, 2022JAPAN, MONSTER, BLOCKBUSTER, POLITICS, ALLEGORY, NATIONALComment

Episode 95 - Contemporary Ukrainian Animation (with Joshua First)

Episode 95 is a special Fantasy/Animation double header, with two recent computer-animated films up for discussion as Chris and Alex look into the stories and symbols of contemporary Ukrainian animation - the country’s first 3D CG film The Dragon Spell (Manuk Depoyan, 2016) based on the stories of Ukrainian writer Anton Siyanika, and The Stolen Princess (Oleg Malamuzh, 2018), a fantasy that adapts the fairytale Ruslan and Ludmila by Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. This week’s instalment features as its guest an expert in the politics and aesthetics of modern Russia and the Soviet Union, Dr Joshua First, who is Croft Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Mississippi.

PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantApril 18, 2022NATIONAL, HISTORY, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILMSComment

Episode 87 - Chinese Animation and the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (1956-1988) (with Yuanyuan Chen)

For Episode 87, Chris and Alex are joined by special guest Dr. Yuanyuan Chen, who teaches animation history and theory at Ulster University, for this brief introduction to Chinese animation and the work of the pioneering Shanghai Animation Film Studio. From propagandist impulses and opera traditions to Chinese state politics and painterly aesthetic styles, the complex history of Chinese animation and its more recent iterations are reflected in this cross-section of contemporary examples, which all serve to highlight the creativity of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio and its influential filmmakers.

PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantNovember 22, 2021ALLEGORY, CHINA, NATIONAL, ANIMATION, CEL-ANIMATION, RELIGIONComment

Episode 81 - Sub-Saharan African Animation (1966-2013) (with Paula Callus)

Episode 81 of the podcast provides an introductory survey of Sub-Saharan African animation, as Chris and Alex plot a pathway through a cross-section of animated fantasies covering a multitude of forms, styles and modes from a number of African countries and territories. Joining them is Dr Paula Callus, Associate Professor in Computer Animation at Bournemouth University and an expert in Sub-Saharan African animation, who has also worked as a consultant and educator on the UNESCO Africa Animated projects in Kenya and South Africa, and who has been involved in projects looking at marginalization and the use of digital technologies (with a focus upon Arts, Activism and Marginalization in Nairobi).

Episode 67 - Flushed Away (David Bowers & Sam Fell, 2006)

Chris and Alex return to the feature films of the Bristol-based Aardman Animations studio for Episode 67, travelling from the world of Kensington propriety ‘up top’ to the underground chaos of Ratropolis ‘down below’ for Flushed Away (David Bowers & Sam Fell, 2006), which tells the story of the trials and tribulations of high society rat Roddy St. James who is inadvertently flushed down into the sewers of London. Mirroring this narrative collision of worlds, Flushed Away also bears the industrial weight of such duality, being part of a 12-year, four-film $250million agreement between Aardman and Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation to produce a series of animated features.

Episode 53 - Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) (with Deborah Shaw)

Episode 53 journeys into the irregular and twisting world of Spanish fantasy cinema, with Chris and Alex joined in their discussion of Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) by Deborah Shaw, Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Portsmouth, and a specialist in Latin American cinema whose publications include The Three Amigos: The Transnational Filmmaking of Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón (Manchester University Press, 2013), as well as the edited collections The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics (I. B. Tauris, 2017).

PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantAugust 3, 2020NATIONAL, TRAUMA, PUPPETRY, VISUAL EFFECTS, SURREALISM, STYLEComment