Animation 100 Press Release

There are a lot of wonderful treasures in the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. You can find galleries of images to browse if you click on MEDIA in the masthead above.

Animation Celebrates Its Centenary

"The first examples of animation fascinated and delighted audiences and that appeal has never waned in the past hundred years. Animators continue to explore and develop new technology, but the goal of entertaining an audience hasn't changed very much since the days of J. Stuart Blackton." -Leonard Maltin, Film Historian

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is celebrating Animation's 100th Birthday on April 6th. From its humble beginnings with J. Stuart Blackton's film, "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" first released on April 6th, 1906, animation has gone on to become one of the greatest American creative contributions to the arts, second only to Jazz.

The Director of ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Archive, Stephen Worth explains, "Although there were many early films that experimented with stop motion and other techniques related to animation, Blackton was the first to create 'drawings that live'... sequential drawings of characters acting and reacting to each other. The word 'animate' literally means 'to give life to'. Blackton gave life to a whole new artform with his pioneering efforts."

James Stuart Blackton was a "Lightning Sketch Artist" in Vaudeville billed as "The Komikal Kartoonist". Inspired by Thomas Edison's recent invention of moving pictures, Blackton teamed with Albert E. Smith to form the first movie studio, Vitagraph Films. Smith and Blackton created what were then called "trick films"... the camera was stopped for a moment while the scene was changed, making objects and people magically appear and disappear; images dissolved from one to another; and shots were double exposed to create ghostly images. In 1900, Blackton experimented with putting his lightning sketch act on film in a movie called "The Enchanted Drawing", but it was in April of 1906 when he made his most important breakthrough. With a trick film titled "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" Blackton created what is widely regarded as the first American animated film.

View the cartoon, courtesy of the Library of Congress...

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906)
(Quicktime / 26 Mb)

The hand of the artist draws faces and characters on a chalkboard. They come to life- smile and wink- a man smokes a cigar and blows smoke in a lady's face, a circus clown leads a small dog to jump through a hoop... By today's standards, the animation is quite primitive, but to audiences to whom live action films were still a marvel, they were magical.

Imagine it... Drawings that move!

Today, animation has grown into a world-wide industry, grossing billions of dollars each year. The names and likenesses of cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny are better known among the general public than the names and images of the Presidents of the United States. Animation has become a serious topic of study at Universities all over the world, and the history of animation is being documented at facilities like the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

ASIFA-Hollywood is building a museum, library and digital archive devoted to the art of animation in Burbank, CA. It is the only facility of its kind in the world. A database of images, biographic and filmographic information, movie files and photos is being assembled for the use of researchers, students, artists and the general public. Although the Archive project was just launched late last year, it has already garnered international attention via its blog, www.animationarchive.org

ASIFA has an online "birthday card" to animation that cartoon fans can sign at...

http://www.animationarchive.org/birthdaycard

Background Info

ASIFA-Hollywood: The International Animated Film Society is a non-profit arts organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the art of animation. It hosts numerous screenings and events throughout the year, including the award ceremony considered to be animation's highest honor, the Annie Awards. For more information on ASIFA-Hollywood and its activities, see...

http://www.asifa-hollywood.org
http://www.annieawards.org
http://www.animationarchive.org

For more information on Animation's Centenary, contact Stephen Worth, Director of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive at...

sworth@animationarchive.org

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