Why Make This Film?

 

I have eaten many a hot meal off this plate design and it still makes me laugh to think that such an elegant plate, with such a beautiful story, would find itself being smothered by left over maccaroni-and-cheese or fish pie.  So for me, this plate carries more than just the Blue Willow legend; it may be Chinese in flavour, but the film actually says more about Kiwiana* culture. 

 

Like the enigmatic Mona Lisa, Virgin Mary or Maori Tiki, the Willow pattern has its own kitsch great-grandchildren subverting those older perspectives of the world - all those insistent ‘isms’:  Imperialism, Orientalism, Capitalism, Feminism and so on.  The plate holds several histories and cultures.

 

 

This is my first animated film and one of the challenges was settling on a "look" and not being seduced by all the exciting stylistic possibilities of animation.  In the end I wanted it to look child-like and crude. 

 

The genre is a collision of many things - absurdism, magic realism, romance, horror, historical and the mischievious.

 

I still think about what is that enduring quality, the original elegance which inspired Thomas Minton to design this plate 300 years ago?  Whatever it is, it inspired me to make this film.

 

 

 

 

* "Kiwiana" is the Kiwi/New Zealand culture