Sylvain Chomet

Life and career

Chomet moved to London in 1988 to work as an animator at the Richard Purdum studio. In September of that year, he established a freelance practice, working on commercials for clients such as Principality, Renault, Swinton and Swissair.

In 1991, Chomet started work on his first animated film The Old Lady and the Pigeons (La Vieille Dame et les pigeons), with backgrounds designed by Nicolas De Crécy.

The following year, he wrote the script for a science fiction comic called The Bridge In Mud.

1993 saw Chomet writing the story for Léon-la-Came, which was drawn by Nicolas De Crécy for À Suivre magazine. This was published in 1995 and won the René Goscinny Prize in 1996.

In 1993, Chomet moved to Canada. During 1995 and 1996, he finished work on The Old Lady and the Pigeons. The short film won him a BAFTA, the Grand Prize at the Annecy Festival, the Cartoon d'Or prize, as well as the Audience Prize and Jury Prize at the Angers Premiers Plans Festival. It also received an Oscar nomination for best animated short film.

In 1997, Chomet published Ugly, Poor, and Sick, again with Nicolas De Crécy. This won them the Alph-Art Best Comic Prize at the Angoulême Comic Strip Festival.

His feature-length animated film, The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville, or Belleville Rendez-vous in the UK) was also nominated for two Oscars in 2003 (Best Animated Feature and Best Song), and introduced Chomet's name to a much wider audience.

Upon the release of The Triplets of Belleville Nicolas De Crécy accused Chomet of plagarising his work, citing it as the reason for the dissolution of their collaboration. The visual style of Les Triplettes de Belleville closely resembles the earlier work of Nicolas De Crécy's 1994 graphic novel Le Bibendum Celeste.

Sometime around 2004 he founded an animation studio in Edinburgh, Scotland, called Django Films.

In 2005 he directed a segment for the collaborative film Paris, je t'aime; he was assigned the 7th arrondissement (the Eiffel Tower). It was Chomet's first work in live action.

Chomet's next movie was the traditionally-animated feature film The Illusionist (L'Illusionniste), which premiered at the Berlinale in February 2010, after many delays (it was first planned for release in 2007) The Illusionist, like Chomet's previous work, has its roots in mid twentieth century popular French culture. It is based on an unproduced script that Jacques Tati had written in 1956 as a personal letter to his estranged eldest daughter, and stars an animated version of Tati himself. It was originally conceived by Tati as a journey of love and discovery that takes two characters across western Europe to Prague. Chomet says that "Tati wanted to move from purely visual comedy and try an emotionally deeper story" Its estimated cost around is £10 million and was funded by Pathé Pictures.

According to the 2006 reading of The Illusionist script at the London Film School introduced by Chomet, "The great French comic Jacques Tati wrote the script of The Illusionist and intended to make it as a live action film with his daughter."

Another project, Barbacoa, originally stated to be released in late 2005, was canceled because of lack of funding. Also, The Tale of Despereaux was to be Chomet's first computer-animated film, scheduled to come to American theaters Christmas 2008, but direction shifted to Sam Fell after the production studio dismissed Chomet. Chomet, for his part, says that he could not stand the creative environment.

Chomet has been critical of the standard of British art schools in their lack of ability to produce sufficiently skilled animators required for his Edinburgh Studio. Django Films never got close to employing the 250 Artists that it would require, as reported by Scotland on Sunday in 2005.

Filmography

References

External links

Category:1963 births Category:French animators Category:French comics writers Category:Living people Category:People from Maisons-Laffitte Category:Canadian film directors Category:European Film Awards winners (people)