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Art Exhibitions Movies Animation Features

LAIKA presents
Wildwood
The Exhibition

LAIKA presents Wildwood The Exhibition

at the Design Museum, Kensington, London, to tie in with the release of their new film Wildwood

Like previous Laika offerings, latest production Wildwood (Travis Knight, 2026) is highly innovative, inventive and imaginative, pushing the boundaries of the cinematic and stop-frame mediums into places audiences haven’t seen them go before. It sounds an unlikely proposition, but if you were to remove the magical spectacle of stop-frame animation from Wildwood – or for that matter from any of Laika’s films – you would potentially have an incredible exhibition of small scale sets, puppets and models.

Photo © Jeremy Clarke

You could augment this using a series of explanatory videos talking about the various processes involved In the filmmaking. In terms of stop-frame, you could show animators at work, bringing puppets into life.

The legendary stop-frame animation company have done exactly that. have done exactly that. Following in the footsteps of the LAIKA Frame x Frame exhibition covering Laika’s first five films at BFI Southbank in 2024, the company have now partnered with Kensington’s Design Museum to put together a fascinating exhibition about the film.

Photo © Jeremy Clarke

I should declare at this point that I was lucky enough to see the exhibition having viewed the film a few days previously.… Read the rest

Categories
Movies Documentary Features Live Action

Fungi Web of Life
laser digital IMAX 3D

Fungi Web of Life
laser digital IMAX 3D

Director – Joseph Nizeti – Co-directors – Gisela Kaufmann, Paul Phelan – 2023 – Australia – Cert. U – 40m

*****

The amazing world of fungi, its place in the ecosystem and how it may be able to help solve some environmental issues; narrated by Björk, presented by Merlin Sheldrake – out at the BFI Waterloo IMAX on Friday, February 9th

Think of fungi and most of us immediately think of mushrooms or toadstools, but those are merely its above ground manifestation. In fact, the wood wide web (a phrase easily misheard as the more familiar World Wide Web) extends through forests which are, as this notes in passing, disappearing at an alarming rate through deforestation, when the mostly slow paced and marvellous imagery and peaceful sounds and music on offer are briefly interrupted by a close up of the huge drive wheel of a mechanical digger and grating sounds of machinery to match.

Innovative Icelandic musician Björk, who has referred to her 2022 album Fossora as her ‘mushroom album’, lends her voice to the English language narration here. This gives the piece a strange, unearthly feeling that’s somehow perfect for its subject matter.… Read the rest