29/4/2010: THE NOT-SO-GREAT-EUGENE-GREEN GOES TO STUTTGART

Melbourne-based writer, director and animator, Michael Hill’s ‘The Not-So-Great Eugene Green’, has been selected to screen in official International Competition at the prestigious Stuttgart International Festival of the Animated Film, (May 4-9), the second biggest animation festival in the world with 480 films screening to approximately 40,000 people over one week.

With financial support from Screen Australia, Michael will be travelling to Stuttgart in May to support the film’s screening. The multi-award winning director and animator stated that although he had high hopes for the reception of his film, the news of his Stuttgart selection came “as an amazing, and simply wonderful surprise.” He went on to say “to be screened at Stuttgart is an enormous justification for the countless hours spent drawing the twenty thousand individual frames that make up the thirteen minute short film.”

“It is a great honour to be selected into International Competition at the Stuttgart Animation Festival. I’m thrilled and excited to see the laborious and traditional art of hand-drawn animation, particularly Australian-made animation, thrown into the spotlight,” said Michael.

Funded by Screen Australia and produced by Melanie Brunt at Feather Films, ‘The Not So Great Eugene Green’ is a 13-minute hand drawn 2D animation. It has enjoyed international and Australian film festival success since it was premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2009. Most notably, ‘The Not-So-Great Eugene Green’ was nominated as a finalist for the 2009 Best Short Animation Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award. The dark comedy was also well received in recent screenings as a part of the touring program for the Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, and at recent international screenings at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Stiges Film Festival in Spain, and at the Austin Film Festival in Texas, USA.

After having quit his job as a veterinarian three years ago to join the tumultuous and exciting world of film making, Michael’s unique style and humour has not only succeeded in showing the absurdities of life but also invokes a level of melancholy in his art, whilst constantly focusing on the oft forgotten virtues of character depth and strong narrative storytelling.

Michael graduated with a Masters of Creative Media from the RMIT Animation and Interactive Multimedia (AIM) course in 2007. Michael was recently nominated as a finalist in the 2009 Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards. Michael is currently preparing to go into production on his next Screen Australia-funded short animation ‘The Orchestra’.