British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor - Softcover

Kitson, Clare

9780253220967: British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253220963 ISBN 13: 9780253220967

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2009

Clare Kitson celebrates one of the most creative sources of broadcast animation―Britain's pioneering Channel 4, winner of three Academy Awards for animation. In the 1980s and 1990s, Channel 4 flourished as a world champion of televised animation. The channel regularly showcased both British and international works, set up the Animate initiative with the Arts Council of England, and backed the animator-in-residence program hosted by the British Film Institute's Museum of the Moving Image. It commissioned innovative, challenging, left-of-center short films by artists such as the Brothers Quay and Ruth Lingford. Kitson, who served as Channel 4's commissioning editor from 1989 until 1999, helped foster the channel's growing reputation as a broadcasting powerhouse. In British Animation she takes a fond look back at this exceptional era.

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About the Author:

Clare Kitson is a former programmer for the National Film Theatre and for Channel 4 in London. She is author of Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey (2005; distributed by IUP). She lives in London, England.

Review:

Beautifully produced . . . intelligent . . . captivating.August 2009 (Sight & Sound)

Clare Kitson, a former programmer for the National Film Theater and for Channel 4 in London, is our brilliant guide in this must-read look at some of the influential projects that have been produced in the [UK].7/24/09 (Ramin Zahed ANIMATION MAGAZINE)

Kitson . . . has written a humane and intimate history of the ups and downs of animation at the Channel, leavening it with just the right amount of dry wit, personal insight and anecdote. June 25, 2009 (fpsmagazine.com)

The present book lists most of C4's animated commissions, heavily buttressed with snippets of information and anecdotage and more lightly gilded with critical commentary, in roughly chronological order. Since the author was commissioning editor at the station for a decade, a certain celebratory note in respect of that perod is to be expected―and a certain dying fall as we come up to date unsurprising.July 31, 2009 (Times Literary Supplement)

The book . . . offer[s] plenty of insider details because it's written by Clare Kitson, who was the commissioning editor at Channel 4 from 1989 until 1999. Channel 4 is one of the bright spots in TV animation history . . . (Amid Amidi Cartoon Brew)

Clare Kitson has written a characteristically engaging,pertinently-detailed and wrily-amusing study of the heydays of animated film in Britain, in the 1980s and 1990s as championed by the ground-breaking new national, commercial television Channel 4 . . . .
The book should appeal to anyone at all drawn to animation, as a casual spectator, serious student,or professional practitioner.1/16/09 (Phillip Bergson's blog Fest 21.com)

For fans of animation, certainly students, and for an account of the conflict between commercial and artistic concerns, this book is definitely worth a look. . . July 9, 2009 (PopMatters)

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