Winner of this year's Academy Award for Best Animated Short with his touching, personal film The Moon and the Son, John Canemaker has spent more than two decades exploring the aesthetic and emotional possibilities of hand-drawn animation. Canemaker's independent and commissioned works tackle sometimes challenging subjects with imagination and sensitivity as well as humor, using playful and consciously “cartoony” styles to add unexpected resonance. As Museum of Modern Art film curator Jytte Jensen wrote, he has “extended the vocabulary of the art form way beyond the ‘safe' cartoon image.” Canemaker is also a respected historian of the form; the author of ten books, he is director of the animation program at New York University, and has lectured all over the world. We are pleased to have Canemaker as our guest at PFA, presenting his own work and celebrating the vision of pioneering cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay.
