Animation

“…the whole idea of the animated film is to suppress the categories of normal perception (and ultimately, to) annihilate the very conditions of rationality” - (Roger Cardinal, in P. Hames, 1995: 89)

"While most forms of animation serve the particular ends of advertising and propaganda, story-telling and entertainment, and so begin with an idea or a need that originated outside the medium, experimental films normally germinate in the heart of the medium itself…

The discoveries made by the experimentalists are therefore of constant use to the professional animator because they reveal both in their success and their failure what the medium is capable or incapable of accomplishing” -  (Halas & Manvell, The Technique of Film Animation, 1959).

"Animation itself is not an art form but a means of expression that one can put at the service of artistic creativity, but also at the service of business. Animation has certain expressive capabilities: it can, for instance, bring inanimate things (artefacts) to life. This basically magic aspect of animation brings it closer in especially inspired moments to the proximity of poetry" - Jan Svankmajer

"What is particularly interesting about animation is that the "cheat" is so blatant - we don't pretend that what you are seeing on screen isn't a drawing or a lump of plasticine and yet the illusion can still be pulled off" - Mark Baker (The Hill Farm, 1988)

"I enjoy making films without the human voices...the accent and timbre of a voice conveys an abundance of subtle messages, and unless the visuals match those messages harmoniously, there can be conflict" - Michael Dudok de Wit (Father and Daughter, 2000)

"The art of animation which gives life to the inanimate has the power to touch all people, both adults and children, and to bring them together transcending nationality and language" - Fedor Khitruk

"An artist may be like a person who hears music and just starts to dance. He may be dancing for his own satisfaction, but what motivates him to dance also motivates hundreds of other people to dance. The artist is only speaking some kind of common language, speaking to himself, expressing something. And yet, other people come along and recognise it and realise that in the person's dancing, there is something new and different" - Norman MacLaren