Irish Film: Alan Holly's Coda shortlisted for Best Animated Short Academy Award

News from Hollywood where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 10 animated short films that have made the shortlist for the 87th Academy Awards.  The great bit about this is that we have an Irish entry on the shortlist, in the shape of Alan Holly’s wonderful short Coda.

Fifty-eight pictures had originally qualified in the category, which will now be whittled down from these ten to three to five nominees by the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch members. Ireland has previously been represented on Oscar night in the category by Give Up Yer Aul Sins in 2002 and Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty in 2008.

Directed by Alan Holly, Coda is the culmination of two years of painstaking work by a small team of dedicated animation artists. The film tells the story of a lost soul who stumbles drunkenly through the city. In a park, death finds him and shows him many things.

This nine-minute, hand-drawn animated film is voiced by Brian Gleeson (Standby, The Stag, Love/Hate) and Orla Fitzgerald (The Wind that Shakes the Barley).  Alan Holly’s previous short film, Old Fangs, which he co-directed, was selected for Sundance Film Festival.

After premiering at last year’s Galway Film Fleadh, where it picked up the FICC Don Quijote Award, the film has gone on to screen at over 60 festivals, with 15 more between now and the end of the year. It has picked up a Silver Hugo for Best Animated Short at the 50th Chicago International Film Festival, Best Animation at Kino Fest, Most Creative Short Award at The Edinburgh Short Film Festival, and best of all Best Animated Short at South by Southwest.

Coda was produced under the Frameworks animation scheme which is funded by the IFB, RTÉ and the Arts Council.

The 10 films shortlisted are:

The Bigger Picture – Daisy Jacobs, director, and Christopher Hees, producer (National Film and Television School)
Coda – Alan Holly, director (And Maps And Plans)
The Dam Keeper – Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi, directors (Tonko House)
Duet – Glen Keane, director (Glen Keane Productions & ATAP)
Feast – Patrick Osborne, director, and Kristina Reed, producer (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Footprints – Bill Plympton, director (Bill Plympton Studio)
Me and My Moulton – Torill Kove, director (Mikrofilm in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada)
The Numberlys – William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, directors (Moonbot Studios)
A Single Life – Joris Oprins, director (Job, Joris & Marieke)
Symphony No. 42 – Réka Bucsi, director (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest)

The 87th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.