The Master of eMotion for the second edition of SeM Days is Oscarwinning director and producer Peter Lord, co-founder and Creative Director of Aardman Animations, invited to hold a masterclass open to the public that will offer an in-depth look at his personal and artistic journey. Among the directors at Aardman, Peter Lord distinguished himself through a decisive insight: claymation could document human behaviour, capturing its rituals, vices, and embarrassments.
Peter Lord
The initial proof of this discovery is Morph: an anarchic, highly mobile puppet, born within the program Take Hart, almost a pocket-sized alter ego that thinks with its entire body. By lending it his own frown and small whims, Lord realized that plasticine could render not only metamorphosis but also an endless palette of emotional states—not to “photograph” reality, but rather to construct an illuminating satire of it, in which hand-modeled miniatures reconstruct hesitations, uneasy glances, and small automatisms.
Through Lord, then, passes one of Aardman’s most valuable legacies: the observation of humanity from a hidden and delightfully privileged vantage point, “behind” the plasticine, betrayed only by the fingerprints deliberately left on the raw material. Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, in the climate that would lead to the revival of independent animation supported by the BBC and Channel 4, Lord and David Sproxton devised a unique device: it worked by recording real conversations, editing them with minimal rewriting, and finally assigning them to claymation characters that subverted the original contexts with exhilarating irreverence. Down and Out and On Probation are almost social documentaries in plasticine; Sales Pitch and Late Edition instead shift the focus toward revealing explorations of everyday humiliation and indecision. Palmy Days, meanwhile, dares to transpose the recorded chatter of a tea among pensioners onto a desert island, showing that even in shipwreck, British conventions might stubbornly endure. In feature films as well, the short circuit between reality and plastic stylization persists. In Chicken Run, the battery farm becomes a prison camp, while in The Pirates! the Victorian age turns into the stage for a surgical satire of institutions. Among the most memorable shorts, War Story removes the memory of war from heroic rhetoric; Going Equipped transforms an interview into a mental landscape. It is in this way that Lord’s singularity is measured within Aardman: bringing together the playful craftsmanship of Morph, the social observation of the shorts, and, in the feature films, a form of comedy that, without losing its lightness, acquires historical and moral depth.
In addition to the masterclass, to honor this extraordinary figure, Stop e-Motion Days is pleased to dedicate a personal retrospective to him, in which fifteen short films directed or produced by him will be screened, including Early Bird (1983), War Story (1989), Adam (1992), Wat’s Pig (1996) and Morph Finding Nailbrush (2020).
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↘ Auditorium | 16.04, h. 18:30 (88') ↘ The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
↘ Peter Lord Retrospective: All Short Films (introduced by Peter Lord) Auditorium | 18.04, h. 17:00 (77') ↘ Early Bird ↘ Late Edition ↘ On Probation ↘ Palmy Days ↘ Sales Pitch ↘ Babylon ↘ My Baby Just Cares For Me (Upres) ↘ War Story ↘ Going Equipped ↘ Adam ↘ Wat’s Pig ↘ Morph Magic Doors ↘ Morph Finding Nailbrush
↘ Auditorium | 19.04, h. 16:00 (88') ↘ Chicken Run
Following the screening: Masterclass Master of eMotion: Peter Lord with Marco Bellano
Projections:
The Master of eMotion for the second edition of SeM Days is Oscarwinning director and producer Peter Lord, co-founder and Creative Director of Aardman Animations, invited to hold a masterclass open to the public that will offer an in-depth look at his personal and artistic journey. Among the directors at Aardman, Peter Lord distinguished himself through a decisive insight: claymation could document human behaviour, capturing its rituals, vices, and embarrassments.
Peter Lord
The initial proof of this discovery is Morph: an anarchic, highly mobile puppet, born within the program Take Hart, almost a pocket-sized alter ego that thinks with its entire body. By lending it his own frown and small whims, Lord realized that plasticine could render not only metamorphosis but also an endless palette of emotional states—not to “photograph” reality, but rather to construct an illuminating satire of it, in which hand-modeled miniatures reconstruct hesitations, uneasy glances, and small automatisms.
Through Lord, then, passes one of Aardman’s most valuable legacies: the observation of humanity from a hidden and delightfully privileged vantage point, “behind” the plasticine, betrayed only by the fingerprints deliberately left on the raw material. Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, in the climate that would lead to the revival of independent animation supported by the BBC and Channel 4, Lord and David Sproxton devised a unique device: it worked by recording real conversations, editing them with minimal rewriting, and finally assigning them to claymation characters that subverted the original contexts with exhilarating irreverence.
Down and Out and On Probation are almost social documentaries in plasticine; Sales Pitch and Late Edition instead shift the focus toward revealing explorations of everyday humiliation and indecision. Palmy Days, meanwhile, dares to transpose the recorded chatter of a tea among pensioners onto a desert island, showing that even in shipwreck, British conventions might stubbornly endure. In feature films as well, the short circuit between reality and plastic stylization persists. In Chicken Run, the battery farm becomes a prison camp, while in The Pirates! the Victorian age turns into the stage for a surgical satire of institutions. Among the most memorable shorts, War Story removes the memory of war from heroic rhetoric; Going Equipped transforms an interview into a mental landscape. It is in this way that Lord’s singularity is measured within Aardman: bringing together the playful craftsmanship of Morph, the social observation of the shorts, and, in the feature films, a form of comedy that, without losing its lightness, acquires historical and moral depth.
In addition to the masterclass, to honor this extraordinary figure, Stop e-Motion Days is pleased to dedicate a personal retrospective to him, in which fifteen short films directed or produced by him will be screened, including Early Bird (1983), War Story (1989), Adam (1992), Wat’s Pig (1996) and Morph Finding Nailbrush (2020).
↘
↘ Auditorium | 16.04, h. 18:30 (88') ↘ The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
↘ Peter Lord Retrospective: All Short Films (introduced by Peter Lord) Auditorium | 18.04, h. 17:00 (77') ↘ Early Bird ↘ Late Edition ↘ On Probation ↘ Palmy Days ↘ Sales Pitch ↘ Babylon ↘ My Baby Just Cares For Me (Upres) ↘ War Story ↘ Going Equipped ↘ Adam ↘ Wat’s Pig ↘ Morph Magic Doors ↘ Morph Finding Nailbrush
↘ Auditorium | 19.04, h. 16:00 (88') ↘ Chicken Run
Following the screening: Masterclass Master of eMotion: Peter Lord with Marco Bellano
Projections:
