IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY

“Warped keyhole-size images stack atop one another in a Frankenstein-ian col­lage that evokes the films of Ter­rence Mal­ick, David Lynch, Stan Brakhage, and Bruce Con­ner. See­ing “the years [slip] out of [Bill’s] head” in this 71-minute com­pendium is noth­ing short of rev­e­la­tory.” — Vil­lage Voice

“Con­sid­er­ing that he’s a stick fig­ure, Bill, the main char­ac­ter in “It’s Such a Beau­ti­ful Day,” sure does have a com­plex inter­nal life. And this ani­mated film by Don Hertzfeldt does an amaz­ing job of mak­ing you feel it, in all its sad­ness, ter­ror and tran­scen­dence.” — New York Times Crit­ics Pick

“…affirms Hertzfeldt as a true vir­tu­oso, con­struct­ing an emo­tional nar­ra­tive of exis­ten­tial med­i­ta­tion from swaths of banal occur­rences, night­mar­ish hal­lu­ci­na­tions and dev­as­tat­ingly funny mem­o­ries.” — Mubi

“Sur­pris­ingly mov­ing ani­mated fea­ture ben­e­fits from dark humor that doesn’t under­cut its story’s high stakes.” — Hol­ly­wood Reporter

Writ­ten, Ani­mated and Directed by Don Hertzfeldt
71 min­utes, color and B&W, 2012

avail­able for the­atri­cal screen­ings on quick­time and blu-ray

Cult ani­ma­tor and Acad­emy Award nom­i­nee Don Hertzfeldt has remas­tered and joined together his “Bill” tril­ogy of short films into a fea­ture film.

As short films, Chap­ter One, Every­thing Will Be OK, won the Sun­dance Film Festival’s Jury Award in Short Film­mak­ing and was named by many crit­ics as one of the “best films of 2007, “Chap­ter Two, I Am So Proud of You, received twenty-seven awards and was described by the San Fran­cisco Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val as “[his] best yet… even the Hertzfeldt faith­ful may be too stunned to laugh.” Chap­ter Three, It’s Such a Beau­ti­ful Day played the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val before tour­ing the US last Spring and Summer.

The fea­ture blends tra­di­tional ani­ma­tion, exper­i­men­tal opti­cal effects, trick pho­tog­ra­phy, and new dig­i­tal hybrids printed out one frame at a time, and was cap­tured entirely on an antique 35mm ani­ma­tion stand, one of the last remain­ing cam­eras of its kind left in Amer­ica. Don per­son­ally remas­tered the film to dig­i­tal for­mats for this new, exclu­sive the­atri­cal run.

The films will not be seen in the­aters after this as Don embarks on a new fea­ture film.

NEW: Don talks to the inter­net!
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/101eu3/don_hertzfeldt_filmmaker_ama/?sort=top

c) 2012 Don Hertzfeldt

SELECTED REVIEWS for the Bill trilogy:

“Imag­ine The Tree of Life’s dawn-of-creation sequence recre­ated with elec­tri­cal tape and Pop­si­cle sticks to equally daz­zling effect, and you’ll have some idea of the magic that ani­ma­tor Don Hertzfeldt can work with stick fig­ures and paper. A one-man oper­a­tion in a medium over­whelm­ingly dom­i­nated by the indus­trial model, Hertzfeldt has built a ded­i­cated fol­low­ing over the past two decades.” –Sam Adams, the Onion AV Club

“There is a moment in each install­ment of Don Hertzfeldt’s mas­ter­ful tril­ogy of ani­mated shorts where you feel some­thing in your chest. It’s an unmis­tak­ably car­diac event, the kind that great art can elicit when some­thing pro­found and unde­ni­ably true is con­veyed about the human con­di­tion. That’s when you say to your­self: are stick fig­ures sup­posed to make me feel this way? In the hands of a mas­ter, yes. And Hertzfeldt is to stick fig­ures what Franz Liszt was to planks of ebony and ivory and what Ted Williams was to a stick of white ash: some­one so tran­scen­den­tally expert that to describe what they do in lit­eral terms is bor­der­line demean­ing.” - Steven Pate, The Chicagoist

“…genius…In his trade­mark 2-D ani­ma­tion, a stick fig­ure enacts quo­tid­ian rit­u­als — fruit buy­ing, com­mut­ing — with a grow­ing sense of ennui, exis­ten­tial angst, and even­tu­ally insan­ity. It’s hell­ish — and mov­ing, too.” — Nina Maclaugh­lin, Boston Phoenix

“…the story, music, fig­ures, and opti­cal effects have been brought into per­fect align­ment… for a long time after­ward, a sense of won­der for every­day life lingers.” — J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

“…darkly orig­i­nal…” — Rebecca Win­ters Kee­gan, TIME magazine

“…Hertzfeldt’s lat­est mas­ter­piece… cracks hilar­i­ous jokes while look­ing squarely at the mean­ing­less­ness of every­day life. It’s like see­ing a char­ac­ter from a Ray­mond Carver short story trapped in a “Far Side” car­toon… Hertzfeldt pushes the art form and its audi­ence into some unex­pect­edly seri­ous places.” — Curt Hol­man, Cre­ative Loaf­ing Atlanta

“.…a f*cking mas­ter­piece. I can’t even begin to artic­u­late my thoughts about the film but it just gave me shiv­ers and I wasn’t able to attend the party after the screen­ing. Just had to be alone. It had this effect on a num­ber of other peo­ple here too.… stun­ning, beau­ti­ful, tragic, absurd work.” — Chris Robin­son, artis­tic direc­tor Ottawa Inter­na­tional Ani­ma­tion Festival

“An extra­or­di­nary med­i­ta­tion on life, child­hood, aging, futil­ity and the search for mean­ing. Fus­ing the work of artists like Guy Maddin, David Lynch and Crispin Glover, ani­ma­tor Don Hertzfeldt has cre­ated a mas­ter­work. Watch­ing this twenty-two minute life story of stick-figure, Bill, is to see some­one in com­plete con­trol of their medium. It’s hys­ter­i­cally funny, whim­si­cal, macabre, hor­ri­fy­ing, sen­ti­men­tal, mawk­ish, chill­ing, insight­ful and sub­lime — all at the same moment. Make the time to see this pic­ture — if you can’t see it at the Fest then put it on your queue, your down­load in-box, your phone insta-list — what­ever, what­ever you use to view films — make a note and see it.” — Jett Loe, the Film Talk

“…daz­zlingly mixes stick-figure ani­ma­tion with live-action footage, com­presses one sad sack’s whole life and fam­ily his­tory into a hand­ful of min­utes. Events are nar­rated in non sequiturs as dryly funny as the draw­ings… the over­all effect is as ecsta­tic as the bars of Wag­ner, which fill its final minute.” — FX Feeney, LA Weekly

“Hertzfeldt’s work chan­nels a lot of the aspi­ra­tions and anx­i­eties of us all… I Am So Proud Of You made me cry. It’s not just slap­stick humour. I’m sure a lot of it is about psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse. He doesn’t use dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy; every­thing you see in a Don Hertzfeldt film has been scrib­bled down on a piece of paper and shot directly on to film. The ros­trum cam­era he uses allegedly shot all the Peanuts films, and there is a kind of syn­chronic­ity with Peanuts and Don’s work. It’s Amer­i­can child­hood. His work is a sub­ver­sion of that Amer­i­can ideal.” — Ian Gard­ner, Edin­burgh Inter­na­tional Film Festival

“…con­tin­ues the inde­pen­dent animator’s expand­ing tech­nique, which matches his min­i­mal­is­tic stick fig­ure char­ac­ters with gor­geous pho­to­graphic imagery and fil­ters that through the look and feel of silent film. He’s a tragic come­dian with lov­able streak of dark absur­dity — like all great ani­ma­tors in the his­tory of the medium.” - Eric Kohn, Indiewire

c) 2012 Don Hertzfeldt

c) 2012 Don Hertzfeldt

Don Hertzfeldt’s ani­mated films have been fea­tured in over a thou­sand film fes­ti­vals and venues around the world and have col­lec­tively received over 150 inter­na­tional awards.

Some notable hon­ors include a Short Film Palm D’or nom­i­na­tion at the 1999 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val (Billy’s Bal­loon), a 2001 Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Best Ani­mated Short (Rejected), the Sun­dance Film Festival’s Jury Award in Short Film­mak­ing (Every­thing will be OK), and Best Pic­ture and Best Screen­play from the Fargo Film Fes­ti­val (I Am So Proud of You).

In 2010, Don received the San Fran­cisco Inter­na­tional Film Festival’s “Per­sis­tence of Vision” Life­time Achieve­ment Award at the age of 33.

bitterfilms.com

SHOWTIMES

Nov 30, Dec 7 and 14: North­west Film Forum, Seat­tle, WA
Dec 15–17: Roxie The­ater, San Fran­cisco, CA

past shows:
Aug 24 and 25: The Guild Cin­ema, Albu­querque, NM
Sept 14–20: Rag­tag The­ater, Colum­bia, MO
Sept 14–20: Lyric Cin­ema Cafe, Fort Collins, CO
Sept 20–24: Cine­fam­ily, LA
Sept 21 and 22: The Guild Cin­ema, Albu­querque, NM
Sept 21–27: Hol­ly­wood The­ater, Port­land, OR
Sept 28–30: Pick­ford Film Cen­ter, Belling­ham, WA
Oct 5: Texas The­ater, Dal­las, TX
Oct 5–11: The Bijou Art Cin­e­mas, Eugene, OR
Oct 5–11: IFC Cen­ter, New York, NY
Oct 12: Cor­nell Cin­ema, Ithaca, NY
Oct 12–18: The Loft Cin­ema, Tuc­son, AZ
Oct 19–20 and 26–27: Real Art Ways, Hart­ford, CT
Oct 25: Okla­homa City Museum of Art
Nov 7: Inter­na­tional Film Series, Boul­der, CO
Nov 9: The Tower The­atre, Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 16–20: Metro Cin­ema, Edmon­ton, AB, Canada
Nov 16–22: Den­ver Film Soci­ety, CO
Nov 19: Bear Tooth The­atre­pub, Anchor­age AK
Nov 24: Third Street The­ater, Phoenix Cen­ter for the Arts, AZ
Nov 25 and 28: Gene Siskel Film Cen­ter, Chicago, IL