BELLERBYS COLLEGE LIBRARY
Queens Campus, Bateman Street, CAMBRIDGE
THURSDAY 22nd November 2007 6pm
HALAS & BATCHELOR CARTOONS
PRESENT
ANIMATION MASTERS FROM HUNGARY & BRITAIN
Lecture by VIVIEN HALAS
The Halas & Batchelor Collection
Free entrance
Vivien Halas
She has enjoyed a successful career as a
graphic designer, working for a number of
top design groups in London and Paris, as
well as founding two design compagnies
of her own.
In 1995 she became director of The Halas &
Batchelor Collection and has contributed to
numerous animation and design publications.
The most recent Halas & Batchelor Cartoons,
an animated history , was written with Prof.
Paul Wells of Loughborough University and has
an introduction by Nick Park of Aardman
Animations (Wallace and Gromit). The book is
lavishly illustrated and traces the life of the
pioneering animation studio and its impact
on Britisch and European animation.
THE PROGRAMME
A selection of some of the best cartoon films from
Hungary and Britain from the early 1930's to the
1980's, tracing the parallel influences of two pioneers
John Halas who left Hungary to found Halas & Batchelor
in London with my British mother Joy Batchelor and
Gyula Macskassy who stayed in Budapest to found the
national animation studio Pannonia.
My parents and Macskassy believed that animation was
an art form that embraced all disciplines, design, art, music,
movement and humour to interest all kinds of audience
regardless of age, nationality or political persuasion.
The talk and films will last around 1 hour 30 minutes
HALAS & BATCHELOR CATOON FILMS STUDIO
1940 -1995
was the largest and most influential animation
studio in Western Europe for over 50 years.
From small beginnings in 1940 they made over
2,000 films and earned an international
reputation for fine animation.
" Animal Farm " remains the most famous.
Adapted from George Orwell's classic book, it
was released in 1954 and was Britain's first full
length animated feature in colour.
It was banned in Hungary.
JOHN HALAS 1912 Budapest - 1995 London
Studied painting in Budapest and was
influenced by Bauhaus and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
He worked with George Pal, the puppet-film
maker.
He was always experimenting with new
techniques from the first Technicolor 3D to
animation and computer animation.
John's experience of religious differences within
his own family and a deep personal knowledge
of the effects of intolerance - many of his
family perished in the Holocaust - brought a
profoundly humanitarian element to his more
personal work, often through satire and humour.
JOY BATCHELOR 1914 Watford - 1991 London
She started as an illustrator/animator - a rare
thing for a woman in the mid-Thirties.
She took on writing, directing and designing
the films as well as producing them.
Commercials, propaganda, educational and
entertainment films made her a driving force
within the studio.
HALAS & BATCHELOR, An animated history -
Southbank Publishing
The BOOK & DVD is on sale at the event.
Vivien will sign copies.
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