Marc Davis, who died in 2000, was one of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men," the affectionate nickname given to Disney's core animators. Over his years with Disney, Davis designed and animated such classic characters as Thumper from "Bambi," Brer Rabbit in "Song of the South" and Cruella De Vil of "101 Dalmatians."
For the past decade, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has honored him with an annual lecture series, which features top animators from the past and present. The 11th annual celebration, Wednesday at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, casts its spotlight on five Academy Award-nominated female animators from Canada: Janet Perlman, Caroline Leaf, the duo of Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, and Torill Kove, the last of whom picked up the animated short film Oscar this year for her enchanting "The Danish Poet."
The women's Oscar-nominated work will be screened, and critic Charles Solomon will moderate a panel discussion among them that will also celebrate the contributions of the National Film Board of Canada, for which all have worked.
Perlman, who received an Oscar nomination for her clever 1981 short, "The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin," has been animating for more than 30 years. She studied animation at art school and got her start professionally while still a student. "I live in Montreal, which has the National Film Board there, and I heard they were hiring students for the summer for short projects. I applied and I got in," she says.
Immediately, she started work on her first film. "They have very small crews and individuals doing all the different aspects of animation," she says. "There weren't a lot of rules then because there were very few animation programs set up."
Perlman had been animating for six years when she did her innovative take on the tale of Cinderella. "I have done more than a normal share of penguins in animation," she says, laughing. "But I can't say I had this passion for penguins. . . . I wanted to think of a larger project, and that is where 'Cinderella Penguin' came from. I thought the combination of Cinderella and a penguin is something that works."
Penguins have become something of a cottage industry for her. A graphic novel she made, "Penguins Behind Bars," became a half-hour special for Cartoon Network, and she has written penguin books for children.
L.A.'s animation world never beckoned to her, but she doesn't seem to mind. "You know, most of the work I have been doing is as an independent filmmaker," she says. "It didn't seem necessary [to come to L.A.]."
