Making-of: Seeking HIDE: What’s Behind Door?

The multiple award-winning Daniel Gray will present his newest short animation, HIDE which started its festival circuit at Ottawa and continued at Montreal, Clermont-Ferrand, Zagreb and Krakow.

Daniel, the writer and director and Bella Szederkényi, his producer will reveal what’s behind the door and will share the story of creating HIDE from its conception, development, finding partners, pitching failing, pitching succeeding, residencies, pre-production, production, post-production, sound recording challenges, life complications and its afterlife at the festivals.

ABOUT DANIEL GRAY:
Daniel Gray studied Fine Art at the University of Wales Cardiff. After a stint as a represented painter, Daniel started experimenting with animation. While studying animation at the University of Wales, Newport, he met Tom Brown. The duo started a creative partnership that began with their graduation short film, t.o.m. (2006). This short tale about a young boy’s rather peculiar and revealing journey to school was an instant success at international film festivals, collecting awards from Ottawa, Annecy, and Sundance, as well as at the British Animation Awards. Their next film, teeth (2015), which tells the life story of a man (voiced by Richard E. Grant) through the history of teeth, screened at more than 40 festivals and won numerous awards. In addition to the imaginative music video Constant Growth Fails (2017), Gray has directed many commissioned works. He has also served on a film festival jury and as a visiting lecturer at universities, and has led a number of creative animation workshops. Daniel currently lives in Hungary with his wife and daughters. His most recent film, Hide, is a co-production between La Cellule Productions, CUB Animation Studio, and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY:
t.o.m., 2006 (with Tom Brown)
teeth, 2015 (with Tom Brown)
HIDE, 2020

ABOUT BELLA SZEDERKÉNYI:
Bella Szederkényi graduated as an animation filmmaker from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest in 2009, after directing her multi-award-winning diploma film Orsolya. She then completed three years of her DLA studies, and in 2015 she and Bálint Farkas Gelley founded CUB Animation Studio, where she’s slowly shifted her role from directing to producing, helping young talents find opportunities to create their own films. She is also a lecturer at the ASF animation workshops and the MOME Animation department.

ABOUT HIDE:
Two brothers entertain themselves with a joyous game of hide and seek while their parents cook dinner. As one boy counts, the other quickly hides in a small cabinet full of glasses, stubbornly determined to win. Seconds pass… then minutes… years… and decades. Every so often the boy peeks out of the sideboard. What he sees is strange and unfamiliar. With each glance, everything and everyone he once knew changes and fades, until he is left alone. Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Daniel Gray (t.o.m., 2006; teeth, 2015), HIDE is an emotionally stirring and surreal animated short with elements that could be described as horror. Using a sparse soundtrack and visual design that shifts from bright and spacious simplicity to opaque fragments, HIDE tells a prescient story about family, social anxiety and isolation in a world that is increasingly disjointed and unrecognisable.

ABOUT CUB ANIMATION:
CUB Animation Studio was founded by Bálint Farkas Gelley and Bella Szederkényi in 2015, guided by a shared obsession with telling stories using the unique tools of animation and the power of young talent. CUB Animation Studio’s favourite things are creating kids’ content with distinctive Central European flair and producing outstanding animated shorts. CUB often takes part in various projects at international pitch events like CEE, Cartoon Springboard and Annecy MIFA. CUB also collaborates on diploma films from MOME university in Budapest; their latest pride and joy is Flóra Anna Buda’s Entropia, which won the Teddy Award at the Berlinale in 2019.

ABOUT LA CELLULE:
Founded in 2015, La Cellule Productions is a Paris-based production company that develops fiction and animation projects. Soyo Giaoui and Marion Barré, the company’s associate producers, maintain an eclectic and daring editorial line. Both are self-taught producers who like the idea of working and “growing up” together by supporting diverse artists who share similar creative ambitions. They’ve recently embarked on international co-productions and are also experimenting with other formats such as web series.

ABOUT NFB:
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) produces groundbreaking animation at its studios in Montreal and at NFB centres across Canada, as well as via international co-productions with many of the world’s leading auteur animators. The NFB is a leader in developing new approaches to stereoscopic 3D animation and animated content for new platforms. The NFB has created over 13,000 productions and won over 7,000 awards, with NFB animation accounting for 7 of the NFB’s 12 Oscars, as well as 6 grand prizes at France’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival, 4 Palmes d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and 2 Golden Bears at Berlinale.

The event is co-organized in cooperation with Primanima, an international festival and competition of first animations. Its co-founders launched the festival in 2012 with a goal to provide a platform for talented young animators to introduce their first films. Five sections compete for the awards of Primanima, student films, graduation films, first films, children’s films, and films for teens. Besides the festival, Primanima organizes educational and cultural programmes throughout the year at BABtér, which is the first incubator house in Hungary that focuses on animation.