Frank Film

Last updated
Frank Film
Directed by
Written byFrank Mouris
Screenplay by
Produced byFrank Mouris [1]
Narrated byFrank Mouris
Edited byFrank Mouris
Music by Tony Schwartz
Release date
  • 13 April 1973 (1973-04-13)
Running time
9 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Frank Film is a 1973 American animated short film by Frank Mouris. [2] [3] The film won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film [4] and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1996.

Contents

Summary

It is a compilation of images co-creator Frank Mouris had collected from magazines [5] interwoven with two narrations, one giving a mostly linear autobiography and the other stating words having to do with the images, the story the first voice is relating, or neither. Each second voice word or phase involves an "F". Frank made the film with Caroline Mouris. [6] The soundtrack was conceived and created by Tony Schwartz. [7] [8] [9]

Reception

The movie won the 1974 Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Animated Films [10] and the Annecy Cristal at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival alongside praise by film critic Andrew Sarris as the best American film at the New York Film Festival and "a nine minute evocation of America's exhilarating everythingness". Vulture ranked the film #82 on their list of Oscar-winning animated shorts. [11]

Legacy

In 1996, Frank Film was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [12] The film was also featured in the 1985 movie titled Explorers . The film was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2019. [13]

Frank Film is included on the 2007 DVD five by two: five animated shorts by frank & caroline mouris. [14] [15] It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows.

See also

Notes

  1. 1974|Oscars.org
  2. Frank Film, Frank Mouris (1973) - extract on YouTube
  3. The Seventies|BAMPFA
  4. Cartoons Considered For An Academy Award 1973|Cartoon Research
  5. Loose Ends|BAMPFA
  6. 1974 Frank Film Frank: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive
  7. Oddball Films
  8. Oddball Films
  9. Oddball Films
  10. The Opening of the Academy Awards:1974 Oscars
  11. Fassler, Jeremy (26 February 2019). "Every Oscar Winner for Animated Short Subject, Ranked". Vulture.com .
  12. "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
  13. "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  14. "Five by two: Five animated shorts (DVD)". Archived from the original on 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2010-12-01.
  15. Frank Film (1973) Theatrical Cartoon - BCDB [ dead link ]

Related Research Articles

The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931–32, to the present.

Silly Symphony is an American animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the Silly Symphonies were originally intended as whimsical accompaniments to pieces of music. As such, the films usually did not feature continuing characters, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts produced by Disney at the same time. The series is notable for its innovation with Technicolor and the multiplane motion picture camera, as well as its introduction of the character Donald Duck making his first appearance in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Wise Little Hen in 1934. Seven shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Productions of America</span> American film production company

United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio and later distribution company founded in 1941 as Industrial Film and Poster Service by former Walt Disney Productions employees. Beginning with industrial and World War II training films, UPA eventually produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictures such as the Mr. Magoo series. In 1956, UPA produced a television series for CBS, The Boing-Boing Show, hosted by Gerald McBoing Boing. In the 1960s, UPA produced syndicated Mr. Magoo and Dick Tracy television series and other series and specials, including Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol. UPA also produced two animated features, 1001 Arabian Nights and Gay Purr-ee, and distributed Japanese films from Toho Studios in the 1970s and 1980s.

The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Plympton</span> American illustrator, animator, and film director

Bill Plympton is an American animator, graphic designer, cartoonist, and filmmaker best known for his 1987 Academy Award–nominated animated short Your Face and his series of shorts featuring a dog character starting with 2004's Guard Dog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene Deitch</span> American illustrator, animator, and film director (1924–2020)

Eugene Merril Deitch was an American illustrator, animator, comics artist, and film director who was based in Prague from the 1960s until his death in 2020. Deitch was known for creating animated cartoons such as Munro, Tom Terrific, and Nudnik, as well as his work on the Popeye and Tom and Jerry series.

<i>The Big Snit</i> 1985 film

The Big Snit is a 1985 animated short film written and directed by Richard Condie and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pannonia Film Studio</span> Animation studio in Budapest, Hungary

Pannonia Film Studio was the largest animation studio in Hungary, based in the capital of Budapest. It was formed in 1951, becoming independent in 1957. The studio is said to have closed sometime around 2015.

Ishu Patel is an Indian-Canadian animation film director/producer and educator. During his twenty-five years at the National Film Board of Canada he developed animation techniques and styles to support his themes and vision. Since then he has produced animated spots for television and has been teaching internationally.

Michael Victor Sporn was an American animator who founded his New York City-based company, Michael Sporn Animation in 1980, and produced and directed numerous animated TV specials and short spots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animafest Zagreb</span> Film festival in Croatia

World Festival of Animated Film Zagreb, best known as Animafest Zagreb, is a film festival entirely dedicated to animated film held annually in Zagreb, Croatia. Initiated by the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA), the event was established in 1972. Animafest is the second oldest animation festival in the World, after the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Fantastic Animation Festival is a package film of animation segments, set mostly to music and released in theaters in 1977. It was one of the earliest of the sort of collections typified by Computer Animation Festival and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.

<i>Adam</i> (1992 film) 1992 British film

Adam is a 1992 British stop-motion clay animated short film written, animated and directed by Peter Lord of Aardman Animations. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short and the BAFTA Film Award for Short Animation in 1992, and won two awards at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 1993. The film, which was distributed by Aardman, is based on the beginning of the Book of Genesis.

<i>The Hand</i> (1965 film) 1965 film

The Hand is a 1965 Czechoslovak stop motion puppet animation film directed by Jiří Trnka. It was to be Trnka's final film. Critics and viewers praised The Hand as one of the best animated shorts of all time.

Nedeljko Dragić is a Croatian director, animator, cartoonist and illustrator. Since 1953 he has been a cartoonist and had exhibitions and published a book called Lexicon for Illiterate People in 1966. In 1960 he began working as a designer and animator at Zagreb Film, contributing to the works of N. Kostelac, I. Vrbanić, B. Dovniković and others. Since 1965 he has owned the rights to the movie Elegy and has become one of the most important representatives of the Zagreb School of Animation.

Francis Peter "Frank" Mouris is an American animator. He is best known for his film Frank Film (1973), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Animation historian Jerry Beck had posted on Cartoon Research lists of animated shorts from various studios considered for nomination of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, beginning with 1948 and ending for the time being with 1986.

The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam is a 1970 animated short film by Dale Case and Robert Mitchell.

Tex Avery Screwball Classics is a series of single-disc Blu-ray and DVD sets by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's Warner Archive unit collecting various theatrical cartoons from animation director Tex Avery during his tenure at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio's cartoon division between the years of 1942 and 1955. It is the first comprehensive collection of Avery's MGM shorts to be released on home media in North America since The Compleat Tex Avery series of laserdiscs in the 1990s, with many of the shorts having been previously unreleased on DVD or Blu-ray.

Lachlan Pendragon is a Brisbane-based Australian animator, best known for stop-motion animated film An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It.

References