The bomb and the general

In line with its ongoing exhibition, unfinished conversations, and as part of the Sunday family workshop series*, Beirut art center invites Joan Baz to curate a series of family workshops visiting the earliest methods of film-making. In each workshop, a different artist will introduce an animation technique allowing participants to move an image, frame by frame, and collectively create a short film.

The film will be based on the 1966 children’s book the bomb and the general by Umberto Ecco. Participants will re-imagine and re-animate the story of the picture book about an important general who collects atoms and puts them into bombs that he stores in preparation for war. But the atoms prefer to live in peace and decide to run away. When the general drops the bombs, they don’t explode. The story will be divided into three parts that will respectively be created throughout 3 workshops. You may read more about the book here.

Workshop i : animating the body,  led by Joan Baz
Sunday, March 8, 2015. From 11 am to 1 pm
this workshop will introduce the pixilation technique and will allow participants to animate the first part of the story by capturing the own body movements, frame by frame.

Workshop ii: animating archive images, led by Maria Kassab 
Sunday, April 12, 2015. From 11 am to 1 pm
this workshop will introduce the gif technique and participants will visualize the second part of the story by animating archive images, frame by frame.

Workshop iii: animating found objects led by Lina Ghaibeh
Sunday, April 19, 2015. From 11 am to 1 pm
this workshop will introduce the stop motion technique and participants will create the third part of the story by animating found objects, frame by frame.

Workshop iv: creating sound, led by Wael Kodeih
26.04. 2015 11 am to 1 pm
to conclude this series of family workshops around the creation of the moving image, the participants will learn how to add sound effects to the film that was produced collectively in the previous three workshops.