What do Coraline, Perfect Blue, The Emoji Movie and Up have in common? They all fall under the umbrella of stop-motion or animated movies. And thus, they are clumped together. This mindless aggrupation is something that has always sat wrong with me. When award season rolls around, and masterful demonstrations of what films can do are all grouped into one category, there is a part of the art of cinema that is being disregarded. It is time that stop-motion and animation are treated as mediums of film, rather than genres, and are understood as a vast demonstration of film rather than a lazy bunch.
In 2017, Coco, Loving Vincent, The Boss Baby, Ferdinand, and The Breadwinner were all nominated to the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, with Coco taking the award home. Still, they were not only all considered for the award, but they were considered together. Sometimes this clumping together feels disrespectful to the craftsmanship put into some of these projects. Since its introduction in 2001, only 20 out of the 89 films nominated have come from independent studios – that is only 22 per cent. A whopping 31 per cent of nominations have gone to the Disney/Pixar conglomerate, with a staggering 15 of the 24 wins being given to them. There is a clear disparity in both nominations and awarding of Academy Awards to films that aren’t coming from these massively rich studios. Do not get me wrong, I believe that WALL-E was an exceptional movie deserving of taking home the award, but Big Hero 6 winning over The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a mistake that should never be repeated.
Guillermo del Toro has recently opened a studio to specifically protect stop-motion animation from the threats of AI. This emphasis on the fragility of the medium can be seen with the rise of OpenAI and DeepAI’s image generators, which threaten to give a cheap alternative that results in soulless projects. Del Toro’s Pinocchio, winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2023, is a special showcase of the absolute magnitude that the stop-motion medium can achieve. Movies such as The Boy and The Heron and Loving Vincent are examples of animation being taken to its utmost boundaries, and a masterpiece emerging from it. There are so many explorations of the human experience that can be done by the limitlessness of the animation and stop-motion mediums, they need to be protected and appreciated.
So, in the meantime, here are some recommendations of independent short-films to watch such as A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian by duo AJ Dubler and Carmela Murphy which follow Gray after a bird hits her window, and she meets a stranger, with whom she sings for the bird and eventually falls in love with. The Shyness of Trees directed by Sofiia Chuikovska, Loïck Du Plessis D’Argentré, Lina Han, Simin He, Jiaxin Huang, Maud Le Bras, and Bingqing Shu is a heartbreaking short-film that genuinely made me cry, which follows a daughter’s relationship with her ageing mother, and her relationship with a tree in their backyard. And of course, always, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
“Fantastic Mr. Fox window display” by jasoneppink is licensed under CC BY 2.0.