The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb
Le cinéma peut être le terrain de la forfaiture, de la supercherie et du déguisement. C’est pourquoi l’une des fêtes préférées des cinéphiles, l’Halloween, nous inspire annuellement un programme bien relevé. Cette année, nous vous proposons The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, féroce film d’animation culte.
A scathing adaptation of a classic of children's literature
Inside an artificial insemination factory, a mechanical wasp hovering around the establishment is crushed to death by the machinery's gears, causing its vitals to drop into one of the jars on the conveyor belt. This results in a woman giving birth to a thumb-sized fetus-like child in her and her husband's house in a grim and slum urban town. Outside, a man in a black suit witnesses the whole scene and goes to an alley to encounter Pa Thumb, who picks up a ventriloquist box-shaped doll house to make his son's bedroom. The man simply grins at the him but leaves when he gets creeped out by the ventriloquist's dummy at the window of a toy shop.
David Borthwick
Born in 1947 in Bristol, Dave Borthwick directed his first animated shorts in the 80s before founding bolexbrothers (from the name of the 16 mm little Bolex camera) with Dave Alex Riddett in his hometown in 1991. The foundation of the studio took place during an exciting period for British animation when it was innovating by its boldness and singular aesthetics. By producing commercials, bolexbrothers gave Borthwick the opportunity to work on personal projects. In this way, his internationally successful feature, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, was surprising for the combination of pixilation and stop motion as well as for its use of science fiction and horror elements in the adaptation of a classic of children's literature. (A pilot version of Tom Thumb was shown at Annecy 1991, at a time when the project was destined for the BBC.) Over the next few years, many outstanding films were made at the studio, including the short The Saint Inspector by Mike Booth (1996). In 2005, Borthwick co-created the 3D animation The Magic Roundabout (renamed Doogal in the USA) from the eponymous series by Serge Danot. He passed away on the 27th of October 2012 while he was working on a new puppet feature, Grass Roots.
Marco de Blois for L’Officiel, Festival international du film d’animation d’Annecy, 2013
