Wizards (1977) (Live @ Cinema Museum)

Join Chris and Alex for a discussion of the animated high fantasy epic Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, 1977), recorded in front of a live audience at the Cinema Museum in Kennington, London in January 2020. Conceived by animator Ralph Bakshi, Wizards is a counter-cultural marvel of the 1970s, one that blends a series of innovative animation styles with a story designed to stick two fingers up at the man with its heady mixture of psychedelia, allegory and fantasy. Listen as the conversation turns to the film’s relationship to politics and propaganda through its mixed media aesthetic and formal style; how Wizards mobilises its adult themes, socio-realism and gender politics, and how this appealed to a generation fed on a diet of Disney cartoons; the reflexivity of a narrative that pits forces of technology against the forces of magic; and how the fantasy of its creative illustrations contributes to the status of Wizards as an often overlooked masterpiece from the history of U.S. animation.