showcase: Toronto Alice, by Jennifer Linton

We shared the Indiegogo campaign for this charming film last year, and now we’re very happy to share the film itself.

Toronto Alice from Jennifer Linton on Vimeo.

Here’s the description:

The character of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ is transported to contemporary Toronto. Whilst riding a streetcar, Alice encounters a pair of strange characters who engage her in an equally strange debate over whether or not they exist. The dialogue is borrowed directly from Carroll, but given a fresh and funny new twist in this short stop-motion animation.

Director’s Statement
“Toronto Alice employs paper cutouts and articulated paper puppets, photographed against flat, 2D backgrounds with the technique of stop-motion animation. Using paper cutouts, I strive to capitalize on their inherent anti-realism to produce films steeped in fantastic and dreamlike imagery. The technical limitations of paper puppets, with their characteristically stiff movements, make cutout animation particularly well suited to animations whose themes involve fantasy, surrealism, dreams, and that which otherwise lacks realism. Rather than being an hinderance, the anti-realism of the paper cutout serves to amplify the strangeness of the events that happen throughout.” — Jennifer Linton

Voice of Alice by Nicole Bauman
Voices of Tweedledee & Tweedledum by Matt Speirs
Sound recording and design by Karl Mohr
Stop-motion animation, post-production, editing, and direction by Jennifer Linton
Adapted from “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”, by Lewis Carroll (published in 1871).

This animation was made possible by the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council, and by the generosity of my Indiegogo contributors. Thank you!

Congratulations to Jennifer for producing this short. In today’s hyper-digital age, something that still feels so distinctly hand-made is a rarity.