Growing up, Don Hertzfeldt first fell in love with animation while attending screenings at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Every year in the ’90s, the venue held an annual animation festival, which his parents took him to, where he spent hours watching short films from animators as diverse as Bill Plympton, “Wallace & Gromit” creator Nick Park, and future Pixar directors.
“For a kid, growing up with Saturday morning cartoons and Disney movies, seeing that there’s an independent world out there was mind-melting,” Hertzfeldt told IndieWire in an interview. “You know, I had no idea you could do this independently, by yourself. And it was massively inspirational. I think seeing those indie films made me want to be an animator, and thinking ‘maybe someday I can have a movie in one of these programs.’”
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Now, Hertzfeldt is doing one better and making an animation festival himself. Earlier this month, the acclaimed director behind “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” announced a curated new collection of short films called “Animation Mixtape,” featuring 12 animated shorts from acclaimed and diverse independent directors. Now, IndieWire can exclusively reveal that “Animation Mixtape” will premiere at the IFC Center on August 29 and run through September 4. From there, the program will expand to several other cities through October, with more dates to be announced soon.
Hertzfeldt worked on a similar project from 2003 to 2007, when he collaborated with Mike Judge on “The Animation Show,” a biannual touring festival of animated shorts that brought works from independent animated directors to theaters; he says he still hears today from animators who reach out to say that the series inspired them to enter the medium.
Hertzfeldt decided to revisit the idea because he felt the state of the film industry and media release strategies have changed drastically over the past several years: as he puts it, back in the ’90s and early 2000s when he was starting as a filmmaker, only a few great animated shorts were produced every year, and they could be shown in festivals or via cable TV channels. Now, many more are made, but there are limited avenues to give them wider exposure.
“It’s super easy to make a film now, you could do it on your phone, but too many people are making stuff now. The filters are gone, and so interesting films are getting drowned out by a lot of white noise, and unfortunately, nobody’s curating anything anymore,” Hertzfeldt told IndieWire. “There are no animation festivals. I don’t think cable television exists anymore. It’s like the only outlet outside of a film festival is throwing your work online, and it’s impossible to find or source who’s doing interesting things now. Unless you know these people personally, a couple of the films in our program are available online. Curation is a very needed job in our digital age, and not to mention getting these films in theaters where, arguably, they’re meant to be seen.”
Similarly to “The Animation Show,” “Animation Mixtape” will only be in theaters, and will never be released online or on DVD, as Hertzfeldt wanted to capture the ephemeral, event-like appeal of plays or concerts, treating these films like an experience first and foremost. Hertzfeldt estimates that the anthology will trickle out slowly to hundreds of theaters across the U.S. and Canada, and Hertzfeldt hopes that — should there be sufficient demand — he can keep the program running with new films replacing old ones.
Most unusually and radically, Hertzfeldt, his co-producer Mike Plante, and distributor Ink Films worked out an arrangement where the majority of revenue they generate from the box office will be divided and distributed to the filmmakers whose works are featured in the program.
“I just feel like every time an animator gets paid, an angel gets its wings,” Herzfeldt said. “We’re so often the most abused people in the entire entertainment industry, and so I want to see these people continue to make things for us, and hopefully this can repeat itself next year and the year after that.”
The 12 short films featured in the festival range widely in terms of release date and availability: some were created 40 years ago, while others are recent films fresh from Sundance that have yet to find theatrical distribution. Although he wants to keep some of the program under wraps to surprise people, Hertzfeldt said he’s particularly excited for audiences to discover the 1985 Richard Condie short “The Big Snit” and a previously unreleased piece from the late Bruce Bickford, an artist best known for his claymation work with Frank Zappa. The silent film, found in Bickford’s archives of personal work, was drawn but never scanned or shot, and will be released in the program with a score from Hertzfeldt’s friend, indie artist Naomi Alligator.
“It’s gorgeous, it’s weird, it’s everything you love about his work,” Hertzfeldt said.
While curating the program, Hertzfeldt said he didn’t take submissions, focusing solely on finding projects he had already seen and loved. He described the process of curation as similar to making a concert setlist, organizing the films in a way that builds momentum. Hertzfeldt said he also intentionally went for films that were “fun” and relatively lighthearted.
“They’re either beautiful to look at, or they’re very, very funny, or they’re very entertaining. I feel like people need to be cheered up these days,” Hertzfeldt said. “And this is a happy program, and I think it’s going to be fun for people to discover.”
Hertzfeldt himself doesn’t have a full short in “Animation Mixtape.” He’s currently working on a short film that he expects to come out sometime next year, which he describes as “off the beaten path,” and is currently casting for his next feature, which he calls “very big and very expensive.” But, fans of his work can still see “Animation Mixtape” for a taste of his signature deranged sense of humor, as he made an intro for the anthology, the first minute of which can be viewed in the teaser. In a full circle moment, the short features characters he made for his breakout 2000 animated short “Rejected.”
“While working on [my short film], I could only listen to ambient music, classical music, I could not handle lyrics. It was a very specific vibe,” Hertzfeld said. “When I shifted gears to animate these idiots in this intro where they’re screaming and hollering, it was all Pixies. It was all loud; I had to listen to grungy stuff from my youth to tap back into that energy. Every now and then, I think I need to blow off steam and do something incredibly dumb.”
Watch the teaser for “Animation Mixtape” below.
