LATEST NEWS:
- Azur & Asmar was released to cinemas in the USA by GKIDS on 17 October 2008, beginning with a week-long run at the IFC Center in New York which was extended to two and then three weeks due to the screenings selling out. Click here and enter your zip code to find if there's a cinema near you which is showing it or here for the complete list of where and when it will be screened.Michel Ocelot himself will be in attendance, introducing the films and answering the viewer's questions, at special screenings of Kirikou and the Sorceress on 4 March and Azur & Asmar on 6 March 2009 at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco.Azur & Asmar will soon be out in cinemas in India, courtesy of Alliance , in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu-language versions.I can now confirm that the short film collection Les Trésors cachés de Michel Ocelot (The Hidden Treasures of Michel Ocelot) released in France October 2008 does have English subtitles, even for the making of documentary (but remember that those outside Europe will also need a region 2-compatible DVD player and PAL-compatible television).Peter van der Lugt's interview with Ocelot has revealed, among other things, that the video epilogue to Azur & Asmar, L'Invité aux noces (The Wedding Guest) will be an animatic, rather than a full animation, in the style of The Legend of the Poor Hunchback but with the composer and voice actors of the film.M. Ocelot has designed the poster for this year's International Animation Day (see it at the ASIFA Web site here ) and is currently directing a new 10-part television series of silhouette animations in the style of his late 1980s series Ciné si (Cinema If). A working name for this was project was Bergères et dragons (Shepherdesses and Dragons) but the final title may differ from that.
ABOUT MICHEL OCELOT:
Michel Ocelot was the writer, director, animator and narrator of several award-winning short films and television series in the 1970s and '80s such as The Three Inventors , The Legend of the Poor Hunchback and The Insensitive Princess . However, it was in the 1990s that he had his true breakout hit, making him known even outside of the animation community, with the feature-length film Kirikou and the Sorceress . A phenomenal success in mainland Europe, it revitalised the production of animated feature films in France but was only a minor cult hit in the more prudish markets of the British Isles and North America, where it received only limited distribution a few years later. By then the mainland was already enjoying Princes and Princesses , a compilation movie of the silhouette animation series Ciné si which had been a personal favourite of its creators but, despite winning major industry awards, failed to received the attention it deserved from television networks and the public and so ended its initial run at only eight episodes.
Kirikou et la sorcière © 1998 Les Armateurs/Odec Kid Cartoons/Monipoly/France 3 Cinéma/RTBF/Studio O/Exposure/TEF
Ocelot and his regular collaborators, now known as Studio O, then spent the first of the next decade on two feature film projects. First to emerge was Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, co-directed with Bénédicte Galup, which had grown from being two picture books to two television specials and eventually a cinema feature of four short but related stories which expand on that of Kirikou and the Sorceress. However, his own attention during this time truly lay with a self-initiated project which would be his first wholly new creation since the original Kirikou: Azur & Asmar. With this, also his first foray into three-dimensional computer animation, he has turned his attention from the west to the north of Africa; to the land of the djinn, the roc and the One Thousand and One Nights. Music is by Gabriel Yared , composer of, among others, Jean-Luc Godard's Slow Motion, Jean-Jacques Beineix's Betty Blue, René Laloux's Gandahar, The English Patient, City of Angels, Cold Mountain and 1408; the ending song "La Chanson d'Azur et Asmar" ("The Song of Azur and Asmar") is performed by Souad Massi . As with Kirikou and Princes before it, Azur & Asmar holds the rare prestige of being released in Japan as part of the Ghibli Museum Library , with the Japanese dub directed by Takahata Isao (Takahata, Miyazaki and Ocelot are great admirers of each other's work, Grave of the Fireflies and Pom Poko in particular). Since then, Kirikou and the Sorceress has been adapted for the stage as Kirikou & Karaba and, again, simultaneously to this, Ocelot directed the music video " Earth Intruders " for Björk . Needing to have it finished for two months before he had intended to start on the filming, a characteristic display of ingenuity resulted in a time-saving combination of animation with live action photographed in silhouette.
ABOUT AZUR & ASMAR:
There were once two children: Azur, blond with blue eyes, the son of a feudal lord and Asmar, dark-haired and dark-eyed, son of the nurse who raised them both, best friends close as brothers in that green and flowery land. Life separates them brutally. But Azur does not forget the companions of his childhood stories or the fairy tales of his nanny in the land of the sun. As a young adult, he journeys to the country of his dreams, in search of the Fairy of the Djinn. In this land is Asmar, also determined to find the fairy and win, braving all the dangers and spells of a world of wonders.
Azur et Asmar © 2006 Nord-Ouest Production/Mac Guff Ligne/Studio O/France 3 Cinéma/Rhône-Alpes Cinéma/Artémis Production/Zahorimédia/Intuitions Films/Lucky Red
Azur & Asmar is currently available on DVD-Video in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland and ..ay Disc only in Japan ( see here for other release dates). The soundtrack, featuring Yared's original score and two versions of the song, is available from Amazon and iTunes . Official Web sites are available in Chinese , English , French , Italian , Japanese and Spanish ; I also recommend the English press kit for its interviews with the creators. For teachers, extensive resources can be found at Film Education's microsite ; further links and information aplenty, meanwhile, are on Le Palais des dessins animés' page .