Mar 8, 2016
Festival
San Francisco, CA — The San Francisco Film Society is proud to announce that the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award will be presented to the pioneering studio Aardman at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21–May 5), Sunday May 1, 5:00 pm at the Castro Theatre. Aardman Co-founder and Creative Director Peter Lord will accept the award and participate in an in-depth onstage conversation about the work of the beloved animation studio on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. A screening featuring a selection of Aardman’s short films will provide audiences a chance to see key works from the studio’s rich catalogue.
“We’ve been fans of the work of Aardman at the Festival for quite a while so it is a great thrill to be able to recognize them on their 40th anniversary,” said SFFS Director of Programming Rachel Rosen. “This program will be a great opportunity to perhaps discover some unheralded gems from the studio’s history and to be delighted again by favorite classics.”
Established in 1997, the Persistence of Vision Award each year honors the achievement of a filmmaker or institution whose main body of work is outside the realm of narrative feature filmmaking, crafting documentaries, short films, television, animated, experimental or multiplatform work.
Co-founded by Peter Lord and David Sproxton in the 1970s, Aardman has grown from the two friends’ kitchen-table experimentation to one of the world’s leading model animation studios, with 11 Oscar nominations and four wins. Creating animation that appeals to both adult and family audiences in work that ranges from documentary to madcap adventure, Aardman has produced a stream of stop-motion marvels from Creature Comforts to Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. Along with directing and producing his own stellar work, Lord and Aardman have encouraged and nurtured the careers of many talented new directors. The studio recently debuted their latest short film, Special Delivery, via Google’s 360 film initiative “Spotlight Stories.”
As a director, Peter Lord has been nominated for two Academy Awards and has been honored along with Sproxton with a Special BAFTA Award. He has helped create numerous series for television; music videos, including one for Nina Simone’s “My Baby Just Cares for Me”; and television commercials. With Nick Park, he co-directed Aardman’s first feature, Chicken Run, a critical and commercial success, and produced the studio’s first CGI feature, Flushed Away, in collaboration with DreamWorks. Lord also most recently directed Aardman’s stop-motion adventure on the high seas The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists with Sony Pictures Animation.
About the 40th anniversary program:
From the studio’s original cel-animated sequence featuring Aardman, an inept superhero, to their visionary collaboration on the video for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” to Nick Park’s cherished The Wrong Trousers, this program celebrating Aardman’s 40th anniversary will be a lively tour through the studio’s remarkable history and a reminder of the versatility, humanism and sly charm that mark their impressive output.
Previous recipients of the Persistence of Vision Award include documentarian Kim Longinotto (2015), filmmaker and visual artist Isaac Julien (2014), multidisciplinary artist Jem Cohen (2013), documentarian Barbara Kopple (2012), multimedia artist Matthew Barney (2011), animator Don Hertzfeldt (2010), documentarians Lourdes Portillo (2009), Errol Morris (2008) and Heddy Honigmann (2007), cinematic iconoclast Guy Maddin (2006), documentarians Adam Curtis (2005) and Jon Else (2004), experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill (2003), Latin American cinema pioneer Fernando Birri (2002), avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger (2001), animator Faith Hubley (2000), documentarians Johan van der Keuken (1999) and Robert Frank (1998) and animator Jan Svankmajer (1997).
Tickets to An Afternoon with Aardman Animations are $13 for SFFS members, $15 for the general public. Box office is now open online for members and opens March 10 for the general public.
For general information visit festival.sffs.org.
To request interviews or screeners, contact your Festival publicist.
59th San Francisco International Film Festival
The 59th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21-May 5 at the Castro Theatre, the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, the Roxie Theater and the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco and BAMPFA in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, SFIFF is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in one of the country’s most beautiful cities, featuring nearly 200 films and live events, 14 juried awards with nearly $40,000 in cash prizes and upwards of 100 participating filmmaker guests.