Film Forum is pleased to present CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter?, a feature-length program of 8 new animated films, that will premiere Wednesday, May 10. Long before SOUTH PARK and anime, independent animators exploring their darker recesses reinvented the cartoon. These highly idiosyncratic shorts range from Suzan Pitt’s spectacularly beautiful and bizarre geriatric Mexican fantasy to Lisa Crafts’s elegant, baroque nightmare of childhood fears. George Griffin develops a simple premise – a man and a woman reminiscing – into a cacophony of hostility, guilt, vengeance and redemption. JJ Villard riffs on a Charles Bukowski story of raw teenage gang violence. Andy and Carolyn London find hilarity in disability. Chris Shepherd and David Shrigley whip themselves into a wacky frenzy of existential confusion. Debra Solomon sets the trauma of infertility to sprightly bubblegum music of her own composition. And Suzie Templeton faces death with a sensibility that has been compared to “Edvard Munch on one of his darker days.” Despite the subject matter these animators tackle (or perhaps because of it), they manage to keep their funny bone intact and their brain cells working overtime.

Click here to listen to our podcast:
Q & A session with animators Lisa Crafts, George Griffin, Andy & Carolyn London, Suzan Pitt and Debra Solomon on the opening night of CARTOONS: NO LAUGHING MATTER? (Click here for our Podcast page)

CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter?
The Flooded Playground by Lisa Crafts (2005, 20 mins.)
It Pains Me to Say This by George Griffin (2006, 10 mins.)
The Back Brace by Andy London & Carolyn London (2004, 6 mins.)
El Doctor by Suzan Pitt (2005, 23 mins.)
Who I Am and What I Want by Chris Shepherd & David Shrigley (2005, 7.5 mins.) British
Everybody’s Pregnant by Debra Solomon (1998, 5 mins.)
Dog by Suzie Templeton (2001, 5.5 mins.) British
Son of Satan by JJ Villard (2005, 10 mins.)

Program running time is 87 minutes.
All films are American productions unless otherwise indicated.
The program is not appropriate for children.

See Animation World Network piece on Suzan Pitt’s EL DOCTOR