SAG HARBOR CINEMA’S
ANIMATION WEEKEND
Saturday, April 5 – Sunday, April 6, 2025
Four new animated features from the US, UK, France, and China will screen at the Cinema with a live virtual Q&A from Sag Harbor native Peter Brownsgardt, director of The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, and two claymation workshops for children
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The Cinema will screen four brand new animated films as part of the inaugural “Sag Harbor Cinema’s Animation Weekend” on April 5-6, 2025. The films range from classic animation, to traditional ink painting, to stop motion, to claymation, and hail from the UK, US, Switzerland, and China.
“Animation has always been a big part of our year round Kids and Families Matinees series. This special weekend, entirely dedicated to it, will bring to the Cinema some highlights of recent international animation, as well as the beloved Looney Tunes characters featured in a new movie directed by Sag Harbor’s own Pete Browngardt. It is a group of beautifully crafted and fun films, whose different styles and techniques will offer to our audiences — young, but not only — a great insight into this fundamental form of filmmaking,” says Sag Harbor Cinema’s Founding Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.
Sag Harbor native Peter Browngardt will join the Cinema for a live Q&A via zoom following the screening of his first full-length feature The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie on Sunday, April 6th at 3:15pm. In the film, notorious frenemies Porky Pig and Daffy Duck team up to face an alien invasion.
The weekend will also include an epic story from Chinese indie animator Busifan The Storm (大雨) about a spirited boy and his adoptive father who search for treasure on a mysterious ship. The film features stunning animation inspired by traditional Chinese ink painting. “I wanted to take viewers on an immersive journey into the heart of Chinese culture and mythology while exploring universal themes such as family, courage, and resilience,” Busifan said in a statement about The Storm.
Also part of the special program are two brilliant examples of stop-motion animation: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the newest epic claymation adventure from the UK’s favorite eccentric, cheese-loving inventor and his beagle in in which the duo must face-off against an artificially intelligent ‘smart’ gnome; and the highly lauded stop-motion animation Sauvages (Savages) from French animator Claude Barras. Sauvages, which premiered at Cannes in 2024, tells the story of an indigenous girl who must protect an orphaned orangutan in the jungles of Borneo. Carras’ first full-length animated feature Ma Vie de Courgette (My Life as a Zucchini) was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards in 2017.
Sag Harbor Cinema’s Animation Weekend runs from April 5th-6th, 2025, with each of the four films playing once. Tickets are available individually or as an ‘Animation Weekend Pass’ which is $30 for non-members or $20 for members and permits guests to attend each film one time. The full lineup with times, tickets, and passes are available at the box office or sagharborcinema.org.
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THE CLAYMATION WORKSHOPS
Sag Harbor Cinema is pleased to present two children’s claymation workshops as a part of its Animation Weekend. The first workshop (ages 5-10) will take place on Saturday, April 5th following the screening of the claymation film Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and the second workshop (ages 11-16) will take place on Sunday, April 6th following the screening of the stop-motion film Sauvages. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend the films.
The workshops will be taught by local filmmaker Julian Alvarez. Since graduating from NYU, he has worked on documentaries, short films, and features which have screened at Tribeca, New York, Hamptons International, Austin, and Philadelphia film festivals. Julian started the summer film program at Hayground Camp, teaching campers how to make films. He enjoys returning to his hometown in the summer, often with a camera in hand. He also co-teaches the Summer Film Workshop for High School Students at Sag Harbor Cinema.
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THE FILMS
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THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE
Directed by Peter Browngardt
US, 2024; 91 mins, in English
Rated PG
That’s not all folks! Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, one of the greatest comedic duos in history, are making their hilarious return to the big screen in the sci-fi comedy adventure, THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE. This is the first-ever fully animated Looney Tunes feature-length movie created for a cinema audience. Porky and Daffy are our unlikely heroes and Earth’s only hope when facing the threat of alien invasion. In this buddy-comedy of epic proportions, they race to save the world, delivering all the laugh-out-loud gags and vibrant visuals that have made the Looney Tunes so iconic, but on a scope and scale yet to be experienced. It’s going to be out of this world!
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SAUVAGES (SAVAGES)
Directed by Claude Barras
France/Switzerland/Belgium,UK, 2024; 87 mins, in English with English subtitles
The island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. One day, at the edge of the immense tropical forest where she lives, 11-year-old Kéria discovers an abandoned baby orangutan in her father’s palm tree operation. As she takes care of the young ape, her young cousin Selaï takes refuge with them to escape the conflict between his family and forestry companies. From then on, the trio will fight together against the threat of destruction that weighs on this ancestral forest. The opportunity for Kéria to discover her Penan roots. From the stop motion director Claude Barras of 2016’s Ma vie de Courgette (My Life as a Zucchini), Sauvages (Savages) premiered in the Young Audiences section of Cannes 2024 and played at Locarno 2024 and Annecy 2024.
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THE STORM (大雨)
Directed by Busifan
China, 2024; 102 mins, in Mandarin with English subtitles
Daguzi, a poor young man, finds a child named Bao drifting on the shore and decides to adopt him. To give Bao a better future, he takes him to the Bay of the Great Dragon to search for the treasures of a mysterious black ship. However, Daguzi is captured by the ship’s monster, who begins to turn him into a monster. Bao desperately tries to save his father. Meanwhile, the legends and ghost stories of the bay emerge, revealing many adventures.
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WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL
Directed by Merlin Crossingham & Nick Park
UK, 2024; 82 mins, in English
Rated PG
Aardman’s four-time Academy Award®-winning director Nick Park and Emmy Award-nominated Merlin Crossingham return with a brand new epic adventure, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. In this next installment, Gromit’s concern that Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions proves justified, when Wallace invents a “smart” gnome that seems to develop a mind of its own. When it emerges that a vengeful figure from the past might be masterminding things, it falls to Gromit to battle sinister forces and save his master… or Wallace may never be able to invent again!
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THE FILMMAKER
Pete Browngardt – Director & Executive Producer
Pete Browngardt is the director of The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Before helming the film, he served as the executive producer of the Emmy award-winning Looney Tunes Cartoons for MAX. A visionary in animation, Browngardt is also the creator and executive producer of the Emmy® Award-winning Uncle Grandpa and the Annecy and Emmy® Award-winning Secret Mountain Fort Awesome.
His extensive career includes contributions to several beloved Cartoon Network series, such as Chowder, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, and Adventure Time.
A native of Sag Harbor, NY, Browngardt discovered his passion for animation early, creating his first animated films at just eight years old. After high school, he was accepted into the prestigious Character Animation program at CalArts. At just 19, he began working professionally on Futurama, later contributing to projects at Industrial Light & Magic and MTV Animation.
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As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village.
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