Virtual Screening: Animation at War

How to watch: Tune in on October 23 at 7pm at twitch.tv/filmstudiescenter. You don’t need a Twitch account to watch the films or the discussion. If you would like to ask questions, you’ll need to sign up for a free Twitch account (you can also log in using your Facebook account). To ask questions during the discussion, simply type into Twitch’s chat window.

Captioning is provided for this event here.

Get 30% off Donna Kornhaber's book Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film from the University of Chicago Press by visiting this link and using the code NIGHTMARE30.

From the very beginnings of the medium, animation has been used by artists the world over to unflinchingly convey the terrible experience of war. This screening offers an introduction to the global array of animated films made by artists with a direct knowledge of wartime conflict as combatants, observers, survivors, or members of occupied populations. Moving beyond propaganda, the screening covers animated antiwar and protest films as well as animated works of memory and memorialization, many of them rarely or never before screened in the United States. From Nepal to Japan to the former Yugoslavia, these works present a side of wartime filmmaking that is seldom seen, one that uses animation as a form of historical witness. Curated and introduced by Donna Kornhaber, author of Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film (2019).

Donna Kornhaber is associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches film. She is the author of Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film as well as Wes Anderson: A Collector’s Cinema; Charlie Chaplin, Director; and the forthcoming Silent Film: A Very Short Introduction.

Full program:

Kinshasa, Black September (Jean-Michel Kibushi Ndjate Wooto, Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo/Belgium, 1992)
Leaving the Village (Sanyukta Shrestha, Nepal, 2007) [5:00]
The General’s Boot (Akram Agha, Syria/Saudi Arabia, 2008)
Neighbours (Norman McLaren, Canada, 1952)
The Cake (Daniel Šuljić, Croatia, 1997)
Pica-don (Renzo Kinoshita, Japan, 1979)
Silence (Sylvie Bringas & Orly Yadin, UK, 1998)
We Shall Never Die (Yoram Gross, Israel, 1959)