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From
Dinosaurs to Chickens - with Peter Lord
The Bristol Silents special event on Sunday 14 March proved
one of
our most successful occasions, turning into a three-and-a-half
hour marathon, with none of the audience showing any inclination
to leave, even when the show proper was over.
The centrepiece was a screening of the father of all dinosaur
films,
The Lost World (1925), a free adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s
science-fiction classic. The magical special-effects work is
by Willis O’Brien - pioneer genius of three-dimensional
animation and of the combination of animation and live action,
whose subsequent masterwork was to be King Kong.
This was the British theatrical premiere of the most recent
and complete restoration of The Lost World, an outstanding achievement
by the American film scholar David Shepard, prepared for DVD
release. The screening was supplemented by some out-takes from
the production, with brief glimpses of O’Brien at work,
again discovered by David Shepard. In addition, alternative
and longer versions of two scenes from the film, screened by
courtesy of Lobster Film, Paris, provided new insights into
the story development of this screen version.
The second half of the show was presented by Peter Lord, founder
of Aardman Animation and one of the true heirs of Willis O’Brien.
Bristolian Peter - introduced by chairman David Robinson
as “this city’s major bequest to world cinema”
- discussed the special qualities and discoveries of O’Brien’s
work, and showed an early comedy short directed by O’Brien,
already featuring characterful dinosaurs. He followed this with
a rapid survey of the art of animating three-dimensional puppets,
with examples of the work of Wladislaw Starewicz, George Pal
and a beautifully surreal little adventure starring his own
1970s creation “Morph”. The show concluded with
a brief episode from Aardman’s Chicken Run, in the presence
of two of the film’s stars, exquisitely fashioned 25mm-high
puppet chickens, who were appropriately mobbed and clucked over
by the enchanted audience. |
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