Awards for Leo

Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas' short 'Train Of Thought' has been winning awards all over the World. Latest additions to the awards cabinet includes Best Animation for 19-25 year olds at the BFI Future Film Awards, and 1st Prize at the Kyoto International Student Film and Video Festival in Japan! Congratulations to them both. Below are the awards themselves, plus some revealing judges comments from Kyoto…

Mr. AIUCHI, Keiji

The idea of the woman in the book and the real scene (on the platform of the station) meeting each other is a simple one, but the execution, of the train rushing towards the next station over its line constantly going strait forward, is quite successful. The presentation of the platform before departure and of the people intermingling is carefully produced and makes the movie more profound. The scene where the train sheds its walls and ceiling gives a right sense of surprise in the monotony and is a clever presentation to increase tension. Also the relation between the alternating images, of the actual props, which invoke a sense of substance, and shots which where printed out as photographs and re-filmed, where highly enjoyable.

Ms. ANDO, Momoko

The movie is produced by going back to the basics of animation, it is made by simple materials and uses the white of the paper without using any other colors, from which I got a refreshing impression. There is a consistency in the world, produced whilst avoiding doing anything unnecessary, so it does not feel self assertive and the scene of the sketch and the hand gives it something humane. It succeeds in showing something fun with just simple elements and I believe it is an universal and timeless work.

Mr. KITAKOJI, Takashi

One could say that this is another example which reminds us of the validity of the ordinary scene taken by the Lumière brothers, “L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat”, being repeatedly regarded as “the origin of cinema”. Movies are always a “Train of Thought”. Including the movements of characters, which seems to be an alternation on sequence photographs like that of Eadweard J. Muybridge and  Étienne-Jules Marey, and other references to the origin of cinema, fulfills the intellectual aim of the movie and is backed up by excellent craftsmanship. The rail also implies film, and the changing scenery seen from the window of the train is a film within itself.