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Illusionist, The |
L'illusionniste Dir: Sylvain Chomet
The illusionist is a dying breed of stage performer. Ever since rock and pop stars have taken away slightly more than his bread and butter, his worsening economic situation has forced him to accept questionable engagements in dubious basement venues, at garden parties or in bars and cafés. In one of these obscure establishments – a village pub on Scotland’s west coast – he meets an innocent young girl named Alice. The encounter changes his life completely.
Alice is just as delighted by his magical tricks as everyone else watching the illusionist that night. The performance has been arranged in order to celebrate the advent of electricity on their remote island. But, unlike the others, Alice is completely captivated by our hero and is convinced that his tricks are truly the result of magic. She follows the illusionist to Edinburgh and keeps house for him while he performs at a small local theatre. Delighted by her enthusiasm for his art, he rewards her by ’conjuring up’ ever more generous presents. Unable to imagine anything worse than disappointing Alice, the illusionist can’t bring himself to admit that he cannot really perform magic – instead allowing himself to be bankrupted by the constant present-giving …
The sad yet salutary romantic tale of THE ILLUSIONIST is based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati.
Sylvain Chomet
Sylvain Chomet (b. 1963, Maisons-Laffitte, France) graduated from the newly founded comic art studio at the School of Fine Arts in Angoulême (1987). He acquired his first professional experience with animated film as an assistant in Richard Purdum’s London studio and, at the end of the 1980’s, he was involved in advertising (e.g. Renault, Swissair). After returning to France he established a graphic studio in Montpellier, but then moved to Québec in 1993, where he made the animated short “The Old Lady and the Pigeons” (1997 – BAFTA Award, Grand Prix at the Annecy IFF). In 2002 he made his first feature film “The Triplets of Belleville” which was followed by the feature segment “Tour Eiffel” from the collection of film stories “Paris, je t’aime” (2006) and the feature film THE ILLUSIONIST
Filmography
Les triplettes de Belleville (Belleville’i kolmikud, PÖFF 2003), The Illusionist (2010)
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Country: UK, France
Year: 2010
Length: 1h 30' Language: English, French
Producer: Bob Last, Sally Chomet
Script: Sylvain Chomet
Awards and festivals: Berlin, Karlovy Vary, Melbourne, Toronto, Vancouver
Webpage
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