The inaugural Animation Weekend at the Sag Harbor Cinema promises to “offer to our audiences — young, but not only — a great insight into this fundamental form of filmmaking,” according to Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the venue’s founding artistic director. This weekend will feature traditional ink painting, classic animation, stop-motion, and claymation, as well as two claymation workshops for children.
A highlight of the weekend will be “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie,” the first full-length feature directed by Peter Browngardt, a Sag Harbor native. Set to screen on Sunday afternoon at 3:15, the film brings Porky Pig and Daffy Duck back to the big screen in a sci-fi comedy adventure. The first fully animated Looney Tunes feature created for a cinema audience, it casts Porky and Daffy as unlikely heroes and Earth’s only hope when facing an alien invasion.
Mr. Browngardt created his first animated films when he was 8 years old. He served previously as the executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning Looney Tunes Cartoons for HBO Max, and the creator and executive producer for “Uncle Grandpa and the Annecy” and “Secret Mountain Fort Awesome,” both of which garnered Emmy awards.
The festival will kick off Saturday morning at 11 with “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” a British stop-motion animated comedy directed by Nick Park, a four-time Oscar winner, and Merlin Crossingham, an Emmy Award nominee. When Wallace invents a robotic garden gnome that seems to develop a mind of its own, it requires Gromit to battle sinister forces and save his master.
Another stop-motion film is “Sauvages (Savages),” directed by the French animator Claude Barras. The film, which premiered at Cannes in 2024, tells the story of Keria, an 11-year-old Indigenous girl who must protect an orphaned baby orangutan on her father’s palm tree enterprise. After her cousin takes refuge with her, they fight against the destruction of the ancestral forest by forestry companies.
“The Storm,” by the noted Chinese animator Busifan, follows a spirited boy and his adoptive father who search for treasure on a mysterious ship. The film’s animation is inspired by traditional Chinese ink painting. In a statement about the film, the director said, “I wanted to take viewers on an immersive journey into the heart of Chinese culture and mythology while exploring universal themes such as family, courage, and resilience.”
The cinema will also offer two free children’s claymation workshops over the weekend, The first, for ages 5 to 10, begins on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. The second, for ages 11 to 16, happens at the same time on Sunday. The workshops will be taught by Julian Alvarez, a local filmmaker who co-teaches the cinema’s summer film workshop for high school students. Mr. Alvarez has worked on documentaries, short films, and features that have been shown at various film festivals.
