Indian-Canadian film director
Ishu Patel is an animation film director/producer and educator. During his twenty-five years at the National Film Board of Canada he developed animation techniques and styles to support his themes and vision. Since then he has produced animated spots for television and has been teaching internationally.[1][2]
Background and Studies
Ishu Patel was born on April 20, 1942, in the State of Gujarat, India.
He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from M.S.University of Baroda, Gujarat, following which he was accepted into the first cohort of faculty trainees hired at the newly formed National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
This was an exceptional design school created by the Government of India under the auspices of Mrs. Gandhi and the influential industrialist family of Gautam and Gira Sarabhai. The school was based upon the recommendations and philosophy of the American industrial designers Ray and Charles Eames, as found in The India Report.[3]
Through a Ford Foundation Grant provided to the National Institute of Design, Ishu Patel was able to finish his post graduate studies in Graphic Design under Armin Hoffman at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland, and returned to the National Institute of Design where he taught and became Head of Visual Communications.[4]
Career
A Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship brought Ishu Patel to the National Film Board of Canada to study animation filmmaking for a year, and in 1972 he joined the NFB where, for the next twenty-five years under the NFB mandate Ishu Patel produced and directed animated films and mentored young animation filmmakers.
There he both adapted and originated several notable techniques:
in the abstract film Perspectrum he adapted the Norman McLaren technique of multiple passes and variable exposures; the films Afterlife and Top Priority were the result of accidentally discovering, and then developing, the under-lit plasticine technique; for the film Paradise he developed the under-lit pin hole technique with multiple passes; and for The Bead Game he created the procedures for moving thousands of tiny beads under an ever-zooming-outward camera.
He co-produced animation projects with NHK of Japan and Channel Four of Britain, and contributed French language segments to Sesame Street for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
His many international awards include the British Academy Award, two Oscar nominations, the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and Grand Prix at the Montreal World Film Festival.[5] He is particularly known for his 1977 film Bead Game which was nominated for an Academy Award.[6][7]
Teaching and Master Classes
Through the National Film Board of Canada Outreach Program Ishu Patel conducted animation workshops with Inuit artists of Cape Dorset, with healthcare fieldworkers in Ghana, and with students in the former Yugoslavia, Korea, Japan and the United States. During those years he returned regularly to Ahmedabad, India where he often taught his approaches and techniques to the animation students at his alma mater the National Institute of Design, and contributed some assistance in formulating the animation program.
After leaving the NFBC he conducted student workshops and Master Classes throughout Asia, mentoring young faculty and developing curricula. He has conducted Master Classes at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, and the Animation Image Society of Toronto, at the School of Animation, Communication University of China, Beijing, and at the School of Animation, Southwest University of Nationalities, Chengdu, China. Ishu Patel was Special Guest and conducted screenings and a Master Class at the 7th. Big Cartoon Festival in Moscow, Russia, November 2014. He was Visiting Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.[8]
