AnimaCampus lecture: From Pixar to Pärn / Paul Wells (UK)

The opening lecture at AnimaCampus will look at how animation has been ‘reimagined’

since the fall of the Berlin Wall, re-inventing the cartoon, refreshing the

face of contemporary film, and offering a politicised, and sometimes radical view of

the contemporary world. From its place on the margins, animation is now at the very

centre of cinema and culture itself. Pixar and Dreamworks have re-booted the Disney

and Warner Bros. cartoon wars of the 1930s and 1940s; blockbuster movies rely

on animation in the shape of figures like Hulk and King Kong, and the independent

sector survives, with figures like Priit Pärn helping to re-invent the very aesthetics and

preoccupations of the animated short. The animated documentary has also grown

exponentially – in every context it seems animation has become the most important

method by which to tell us about contemporary life.