Grendel Grendel Grendel: Animating Beowulf

Description

This open access study of the film Grendel Grendel Grendel, directed by Alexander Stitt, presents it as a masterpiece of animation and design which has attained a national and international cult status since its release in 1981. The film, based on the novel, Grendel, by John Gardner, is a loose adaptation of the Beowulf legend, but told from the point of view of the monster, Grendel. Grendel Grendel Grendel is a mature, intelligent, irreverent and quite unique animated film - it is a movie, both in terms of content and of an aesthetic that was well ahead of its time. Along with a brief overview of Australian animation and a contextualization of where this animated feature fits within the broader continuum of Australian (and global) film history, Dan Torre and Lienors Torre provide an intriguing analysis of this significant Australian animated feature. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Dan Torre is a senior lecturer in the School of Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of a number of books, including: Animation - Process, Cognition and Actuality (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Cactus (2017), Carnivorous Plants (2019) and co-author of Australian Animation - An International History (2018). Lienors Torre is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She writes on animation and related areas and is co-author of the book, Australian Animation - An International History (2018). She is also a practicing animator and artist.

Dan and Lienors Torre continue their invaluable contribution to the histories of Australian (and international) animation with this fascinating study of Alexander Stitt's utterly unique cult classic Grendel Grendel Grendel (1981), its production and circulation, and its themes and resonances as a 'reanimation' of Beowulf's monster. * Stephen Morgan, Screening Coordinator, Menzies Australia Institute, King's College London, UK *