For a guy who has travelled the world and been recognized for his work at film festivals internationally, director of animation Eoin Duffy is extremely humble.
Duffy is best known for his 2013 animated short The Missing Scarf, narrated by George Takei of Star Trek fame. In addition to dozens of film festival nods, the film was shortlisted and commended at the 2014 Academy Awards.
His description of a 2013 trip to a Spanish film festival for The Missing Scarf underscores how little the success has impacted Duffy’s ego.
“They drive you around in limos… and you are just a crappy short film director but they treat every one like royalty,” he said, with a hearty laugh. “I still don’t think of myself as having made it.”
Duffy’s latest work, I Am Here, a five-minute National Film Board of Canada animated short that is narrated by TV and film actor Nicholas Campbell (of Da Vinci’s Inquest) is playing this week at the 2016 Vancouver International Film Festival.
“I guess it comes from every person’s questions on faith and death and life and kind of our place in the universe,” Duffy said, explaining the theme of the film, which features the existential thoughts of an older man.
Animation has a long history in Canada and, like Duffy’s I Am Here, much of it has been produced through the National Film Board.
The animated film art form took off in this country after the founding of the board in 1939, according to an article in Historica Canada.
A pioneer in animation, Norman McLaren joined the board as the head of animation.
“In 1942, McLaren was put in charge of the fledgling animation department to produce short propaganda messages for the war effort. McLaren’s effervescent imagination was applied to this task immediately. He also began to recruit young artists from across Canada to assist him,” reads the Historica article. That early start was the foundation for the future success of animated films with the board.
Duffy describes his own route to animation as unconventional. He was originally a graphic designer for print, and later branched out to web design.
“I was kind of just messing around in the evenings trying to teach myself animation,” he said. “It was an experiment that turned into a career.”
Duffy said he doesn’t expect I Am Here to reach the level of success of the comedy The Missing Scarf because it is more serious.
“It was a much simpler film and very easy to decipher with not much confusion,” he said. “For this film people were confused why I didn’t just follow the same route, but I guess I just wanted to challenge myself and push myself into a different path. I knew from the start that it is never going to match the popularity of the first film, but I think it will be a different type of audience.”
Duffy recently moved to Squamish from Vancouver, where he still works.
“We are very new to Squamish,” he said, adding he and his wife moved here two months ago for the lifestyle. “[We like] hiking and we are getting into canoeing and we want to get into biking. Instead of commuting on the weekends, we will commute into town one or two days a week.”
I Am Here had its world premier at the Vancouver International Film Festival on Oct. 2 and next plays at the festival Oct. 9 at 3:15 p.m. at Vancity Theatre in Vancouver. For more on the film go to iamhere.tv.
Below is Duffy's popular The Missing Scarf short.
