Stop Motion: Celebrating handmade animation on the big screen

This mammoth two-month season is dedicated to the boundary-pushing art and science of stop-motion animation.

A time-consuming process that demands patience, painstaking attention to detail and boundless creativity, the flow of stop motion and its illusion of movement helps to draw in audiences with a tangible sense of human interaction – where literal fingerprints are sometimes even visible on screen.

Supported by Headline Partner LAIKA, this landmark season at the BFI Southbank includes a broad range of stop motion animation film screenings including all five of LAIKA’s critically acclaimed creations: Coraline, Paranorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and The Missing Link.

Major directors who have championed the medium of stop motion animation throughout their careers also feature prominently including Guillermo del Toro (Pinocchio), Tim Burton (Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie), Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs).

The quintessential British stop motion studio Aardman Animations is also celebrated in the season with screenings of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, Chicken Run and a programme of Aardman shorts that includes the first outing for Wallace and Gromit A Grand Day Out (1989).

Finally, the season also looks back to early pioneers of the format with screenings of films such as  The Emperor’s Nightingale (1949), Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973).