The Weapon

The Weapon reviewed at Spektakulärt

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:25:38 +0000

Ge got a short review at the Swedish science fiction/fantasy/horror blog Spektakulärt.

Files for all and each

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:09:30 +0000

So, apparently torrents are not for everyone. We’ve made The Weapon available as a regular file download instead, in H.264 format with embedded chapters and subtitles. If you haven’t managed to download the film previously, head over to the download section and enjoy.

We’re gonna be on national television

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:42:18 +0000

It was only a short while ago we closed the deal with SVT, and can now happily announce that The Weapon will be screened on national public service television. It also turns out that entirely independent, low-budget productions such as ours (i.e. without prior financing from SVT) seldom get sold in this manner, so of course we are very proud! No screening dates are set yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we know ourselves.

Young video art at Kulturkiosken

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:06:18 +0000

The Weapon will be screened in a programme of young film/video artists at Kulturkiosken in Gävle, actually the same place where we held our world premiere screening. The event is presented by one of our major benefactors IDKA and the other works shown are:

Tempus by Annica Normann & Niklas Stagvall (music by Anna Frank)
A Lost Skyline by Jesper Larsson
But this is just a Story just a Fairy’s Tale by Sofia Jakobsson
Skugga by Kristin Wiking
Tomrum by Robin Blom
Dokumentation Dans by Fredrik Broander

The screening is held on the 3rd of November at 18:00.

In celebration of International Animation Day

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:37:44 +0000

A few years ago the international film association ASIFA declared October 28th as the International Animation Day. This means that on that day every year, people around the world are encouraged to celebrate the art of animation by arranging screenings or other activities.

This year the International Animation Day is honoured in Sweden by a series of cinema screenings of a special animation programme assembled by Eksjö Animation Festival and the Forum for International Animation. We are happy to announce that The Weapon has been selected as one of the five films screened in this programme! Other films being shown are:

Dreams from the Woods (orig. Drömmar från skogen) by Johannes Nyholm
Slaves (orig. Slavar) by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn
Checkoo by Erik Rosenlund
The Gang of Lidingö (orig. Lidingöligan) by Maja Lindström

Due to local issues, not all screenings will actually be on the 28th of October. These are the places and dates:

Fellingsbro – Fellingsbro folkhögskola, October 23
Kramfors – Ådalsskolan, October 28
Härnösand – Härnösands konsthall, October 28
Sundsvall – Film i västernorrland, October 28
Lund – Panora, October 28
Eksjö – Eksjöbiografen, October 28
Örebro – Bio Roxy, Örebro filmförening
Göteborg – Hagabion, October 30
Stockholm – Bio Rio, October 31 (we will hopefully attend this one ourselves)
Kiruna – Nordic Light Film Festival, November 4–11

See this post for more information on the event, and check out the screenings page for more details on the above screenings.

The Weapon featured in Animation Reporter

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:41:04 +0000

The Indian animation magazine Animation Reporter did interviews with us some time ago, and the resulting feature article has now been published in the August 2009 issue. They have also been very kind to let us publish the article ourselves, it is available as a pdf-file here.

We passed censorship

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:54:39 +0000

Since we still have such a strange thing as a governmental film censorship in Sweden, all films must pass it before screening to the public. The Weapon has been approved by Statens Biografbyrå, and is considered suitable for children of all ages.

Congratulations Södertälje!

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:44:47 +0000

The Weapon was broadcast five times a day this week, on local television station Södertälje LokalTV. Why so often? No idea really, but we are of course very thankful.

No more vacation and lots of good news

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:13:27 +0000

After about a month of low activity due to vacation times, we are now back on track with spreading The Weapon throughout the world. There are some very good news upcoming, some of which we are not at liberty to speak of yet. However, we can tell you that we did an interview for the Indian animation magazine Animation Reporter with a circulation of 10,000 copies. The latest issue with the article on us is on its way to Sweden and luckily we are allowed to put the article online when it arrives; stay tuned.

It also turns out The Weapon will be screened as part of the New Swedish Animation programme (out of competition) at the Eksjö Animation Festival. We do not yet know the details of the screening, but as soon as more information emerges we’ll post it here.

Another very special screening will take place on September 11th at the Culture Night in Kvarnbyn, Mölndal. This year’s theme is “The Astronomy Year 2009” (what’s that?) with lots of interesting activities going on; how about astronomy lectures with space photography projected on whole buildings? The Weapon will be screened as part of a space themed film programme, along with a couple of excellent films by some of the masters of animation and trick cinematography… more on this as soon as the final programme is released.

If you happen to live near Växjö, we are also screened at Öppna Kanalen Växjö tonight at 22:45 (10:45 PM) and also this Sunday at 08:30 (8:30 AM).

In other words, lots of exciting things happening in the near future!

On clay and body boundaries in FLM

Markus Amalthea Magnuson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:14:00 +0000

FLM writes about clay animation, Judith Butler and the boundaries between object and subject; and about us. Although the article mistakenly assumes The Weapon to be made in clay, its description of the threat of dissolving body parts is far too familiar to us after countless hours of melting vaseline fixatives and lost eyelids. Here an excerpt in English:

In clay film, [body] boundaries are always under the threat of dissolution. An eye can slip to the cheek, the stomach slide down to sex organs and knees, and the legs can disappear into the ground.

It is thus a bit surprising that the new clay [sic!] animation The Weapon, directed by Markus Amalthea Magnuson, Mattias Valenca and Sandra Valenca, takes place in something as clinically sterilized as a space station in a folkhemmet-looking future. But at the space ship Minerva, people are quite human. They fry clay eggs (and comment on the eggs’ fake nature), pick on each other, fight and cry clay tears, elevating the abject to an astronomical level.

As impressive as the detailness of the animation, is the producers’ marketing strategy. How many short films produced with tiny budgets, far from established production companies, get a review by Gunnar Bergdahl in Helsingborgs Dagblad?

Note: Gunnar Bergdahl is a well-known Swedish film critic and the former head of Göteborg International Film Festival; the most important film festival in the Nordic countries.

Sorry for the lousy translation, FLM is really to be read in Swedish.