Ryan

Directed by: Chris Landreth
When: 10 pm Friday April 1 2005
Where: HCC Performing Arts Theater

When: 1 pm Saturday April 2 2005
Where: HCC Black Box Theater

When: 10 pm Saturday April 2 2005
Where: HCC Performing Arts Theater

When: 2 pm Sunday April 3 2005
Where: Muvico 2 - Centro Ybor

Oscar® Winner for Best Short Film (Animated)
77th Annual Academy Awards
Hollywood, California, USA, February 27, 2005

A scene from Ryan

A gentleman panhandler. One of the pioneers of Canadian animation. Oscar nominee. Poor beggar. An artist unable to create. God observing the world. Fallen angel. Arrogant. Shy. Broken. Not destroyed.

Ryan, directed by Chris Landreth, is based on the life of Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, Ryan produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Today, Ryan lives on welfare and panhandles for spare change in downtown Montreal. How could such an artistic genius follow this path?

In Ryan we hear the voice of Ryan Larkin and people who have known him, but these voices speak through strange, twisted, broken and disembodied 3D generated characters... people whose appearances are bizarre, humorous or disturbing. Although incredibly realistic and detailed, Ryan was created and animated without the use of live action footage, rotoscoping or motion capture...but instead from an original, personal, hand animated three-dimensional world which Chris calls 'psychological realism'.

A world encapsulated in the words of Anais Nin:
"We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."

Visit the film's website www.nfb.ca/ryan/.