“A Town Called Panic” in a Midnight Screening

In Belgium, “Cowboy” and “Indian” are the names, in English in the text, if you please, of two cartoon heroes beloved by all. As soon as these Calamity Johns cook up a scheme, chaos ensues. This time, they want to celebrate Horse’s birthday, and they’re wondering what to give him. A homemade barbecue, by golly! Well, it was a great idea, but the plan backfires, literally – Horse’s house goes up in flames! A Town Called Panic is a place where the wildest, wooliest things in the world can happen. This animated feature, the second to screen Out of Competition at the 2009 festival after the opening by Up, features a dozen countrified characters who have jumped out of the toy box and come to life. Created by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, authors of the “absurd” adventures of PicPic André, these eccentric little figures have now gone around the world on the festival circuit, after tickling the funny bones of the French in a hit 20-episode series which aired on Canal + (in France and Belgium) in 2003.

Commenting on the artistic puzzle they faced when they embarked on making the feature, Vincent Patar says: “We wanted to tell a fleshed-out story that had more of a sustained structure than a mere collection of free-standing episodes strung together. The other challenge was to maintain the animation style of the TV series – which is fairly “jumpy” – while imparting a somewhat calmer overall rhythm, at the same time using rigid plastic characters. It was tricky to pull off.” His partner Stéphane Aubier observes: “We wanted to further explore the various settings we’d created for the short films by taking the time to show them off in greater detail.”