By Coral Gables Gazette staff
A train ride past Mount Fuji, an animated rendering of Homer’s “Odyssey” and a meditation on discovery will share the screen Wednesday at the Coral Gables Branch Library before participants turn from watching animation to making some of their own.
“Journeys in Motion: Film Screening & Flipbook Workshop” runs Aug. 26 from 5 to 7:30 p.m., pairing three short films centered on travel, movement and perception with a hands-on workshop in which participants will create miniature flipbooks.
The free program is open to ages 14 and older, with materials provided.
A National Film Registry selection
The best-known film on the program is Robert Breer’s “Fuji,” a 1974 experimental animated short inspired by a train journey past Mount Fuji in Japan.
Breer came to animation by an unconventional route. He studied engineering at Stanford before turning toward art, establishing himself as a painter while living in Paris in the 1950s. He later began experimenting with filmmaking, using techniques that drew on his background in abstract painting as well as stop-motion and other forms of animation.
While in Japan, Breer experimented with rotoscoping, in which live-action movement is traced frame by frame. In “Fuji,” recognizable images of passengers, the train and the mountain shift in and out of abstraction, creating a visual impression of a landscape glimpsed in motion rather than a conventional record of a journey.
The Library of Congress selected “Fuji” for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2002, recognizing it as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. The distinction places the experimental short alongside films chosen for their lasting importance to American cinema.
The evening’s other selections approach the idea of a journey from different directions.
Phillip Jones’ “Secrets” is described by the library as a poetic meditation on discovery and concealment. “Illustrations of the Odyssey” uses drawings made by schoolchildren to depict scenes from Homer’s epic, translating one of literature’s best-known journeys into a succession of youthful visual interpretations.
Together, the three films move from physical travel to imagined journeys and the ways motion can be represented on screen.
From screen to flipbook
After the screening, participants will shift from viewers to animators.
The library will provide materials and instruction for creating miniature flipbooks, one of animation’s simplest forms. A sequence of drawings changes slightly from page to page; when the pages are flipped rapidly with a thumb, the images appear to move.
The exercise brings the program’s central idea down to its most basic form. The same principle that allows filmmakers to create movement from individual frames can be reproduced with paper, pencil and a stack of small pages.
No previous animation or drawing experience is listed as necessary. The library is asking participants simply to bring their imagination.
The pairing also gives the evening a practical connection to Breer’s work. Although “Fuji” uses much more sophisticated filmmaking techniques, its rapid shifts between individual images demonstrate the same fundamental illusion on which a hand-drawn flipbook depends: still images becoming motion when viewed in sequence.
‘Journeys in Motion’: Film Screening & Flipbook Workshop
When: Wednesday, Aug. 26, 5 to 7:30 p.m.
Where: Coral Gables Branch, Miami-Dade Public Library System, 3443 Segovia St.
Ages: 14 and older
Cost: Free
Information: 305-442-8706 or capleybr@mdpls.org
