The Persistence of Animation

From Renaissance to Azur: Visual Style and French Animation

Abstract: Recently, Christian Volckman (Renaissance) and Michel Ocelot (Azur et Asmar) have proven exemplary in their very distinct syntheses of French animation traditions with the demands of contemporary digital technologies. This paper examines how both directors build upon French animation’s graphic and narrative history while simultaneously creating very personal visual styles that foreground their concerns with animation, the body, and the representation of a functional auteurist narrative space.

Biographical Statement: Richard Neupert is Charles H. Wheatley Professor of the Arts, a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Coordinator of Film Studies at the University of Georgia. Author of a number of articles on animation history (in Cinémathèque, Film History, Film Quarterly, Studies in French Cinema, among others), his books include The End (Wayne State UP, 1995) and A History of the French New Wave Cinema (Wisconsin UP, 2003 / 2007) as well as translations from French of Jacques Aumont, et. al., Aesthetics of Film (Texas UP, 1992) and Michel Marie’s The French New Wave (Blackwell, 2003).