Fri, 10 May 2019, 18:00 – 21:00
Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Free, but booking required. Book here.
DOOZY is the debut feature from artist-filmmaker Richard Squires. A creative documentary, it uses animated antihero ‘Clovis’ (voiced by Kids in the Hall comedian Mark McKinney) as a means to explore the voice casting of actor Paul Lynde as a series of Hanna-Barbera villains in the 1960s. Through the lens of one of Hollywood’s hidden queer histories, DOOZY contemplates cartoon villainy and hysterical masculinity; the use of voice to signify ‘otherness’’; and the frequently uneasy relationship between character and actor. Mixing original animation, re-enactment, archive and expert testimony, this is quite simply a ‘doozy’ of a film experience.
DOOZY had its world premiere at BFI London Film Festival 2018 and its international premiere at Rotterdam International Film Festival 2019, competing in the Bright Future strand.
There will be a post-screening discussion between director Richard Squires, producer Abigail Addison, contributor John Airlie (Associate Lecturer in Film and Media at Birkbeck), and Dr Joel McKim (Director, Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology). The discussion will look at some of the cartoon villains Paul Lynde was cast to play, the blurred line between actor and character identities, and the entangled histories of representations of sexual ambiguity and criminality on screen.
This event is part of the ongoing BIMI/Vasari Digital Animation Series organized by the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology.
