The East Anglian Film Archive, the first and largest Regional Film Archive in England, was established in 1976. Since 1984, EAFA has been owned and operated by the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UEA), to support research and work to preserve our moving image heritage. More than 250 hours are freely available online as examples of the wide range of film which attracts interest the world over.
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Plastic Platitudes
Specially commended by ‘Amateur Cine World'. Nineteen fifties claymation by Douglas Butcher offering tongue-in-cheek advice for life.
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Overview
J.D. Butcher, known by his middle name Douglas, was an accomplished amateur animator and filmmaker from Essex. He made both live action and animated short films and his film, “Water on the Brain”, was the ‘first time entrant’ winner in the 1955 Competition of the Amateur Cinematographers. In this film, platitudes, those clichéd remarks that we are all guilty of muttering, are here jam-packed into one long clay animated comic monologue.
Butcher’s film was produced at the time of a claymation revival; the 1950s saw a growth in clay animation in children’s television, and in the movies of the legendary Ray Harryhausen. The film is also clearly a product of its time in terms of race and character stereotyping, despite the disclaimer at the film’s beginning.
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