RYAN

We are pleased to be able to show this wonderful film before both screenings of our main feature: THE SEA INSIDE. Because of the length of the main feature and this short film the 2nd screening will be at 7:45 pm not 7:30 pm.

Country: Canada
Director: Chris Landreth
Running time: 14 min.
Rating: Not yet rated

SYNOPSIS - THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD
A gentleman panhandler. One of the pioneers of Canadian animation. Oscar nominee. Poor beggar. An artist unable to create. God observing the world. Fallen angel. Arrogant. Shy. Broken. Not destroyed. "Ryan" is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who, thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Today, Ryan is living on welfare and panhandles for spare change in downtown Montreal. How could such an artistic genius follow this path? We will hear from the voices of prominent animators and artists discussing Ryan's work, and from waitresses, mission-house caretakers and homeless street people who occupy Ryan's present life. In the animated world of "Ryan", these voices will speak through strange, twisted, broken and disembodied, 3-D generated characters...people whose appearances are bizarre, humorous or disturbing...appearances which in turn reflect the creator, Chris Landreth. Finally in the words of Anais Nin, "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are".

Review by Roger Ebert:

"Ryan," from Canada, by Chris Landreth, is an animated 14-minute documentary that cuts deeply into the truth of a human life. The subject is Ryan Larkin, who circa 1970 made animated films considered among the best and most influential in Canadian history, and then went astray into drug addiction and alcoholism. The film takes place largely in a vast room filled with long, empty tables, where Landreth talks with Larkin about his life; there are cutaways to important figures from his past.

The animation technique is dramatic, striking, and wholly original. Apparently beginning with live-action footage, Landreth converts the figures into grotesque cutaways of skull and sinew, eyes and hair, partial faces surrounded by emptiness or marred by bright visual scars representing angst. The effect is hard to describe, impossible to forget; the animation takes the documentary content to another emotional level.