Ishu Patel: A Bridge Between East & West



Born in Gujarat, India, Ishu Patel is an internationally acclaimed film director, animator the educator. His films are screened in international film festivals, and have received worldwide theatrical and television distribution as animated shorts. His many International awards include two Oscar Nominations, the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, Grand Prix at Annecy, Grand Prix at Montreal World Film Festival and the British Academy Award.
Mr. Patel, formerly a tenured Professor at the School of Cinema and Television, Division of Animation and Digital Arts, University of Southern California. He is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences.
For twenty five years, he has been one of the National Film Board of Canada’s animation and director/producer. He co-produced animation with NHK of Japan and Channel Four of Britain.
Ishu has received his bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Baroda. At the National Institute of Design he did his graduate studies in visual communication, which included studies in graphic design, typography, photography, exhibition design and film. A Ford Foundation Grant made possible his Advanced Graphic Design studies at Allegemine Gewerbschule, Basel, Switzerland. He served as Head of Visual Communications Department at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. A Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship brought him to study and develop animation filmmaking at the National Board of Canada.
Ishu has conducted his popular Animation Workshops with the Inuit artists of Cape Dorset in the High Arctic and students in Ghana, Yugoslavia, India, Korea and USA.

 

All of these films are produced by National Film Board of Canada

 
Divine Fate
10 min 40 sec / 1993

I harvested mangoes with my father. We always left the fruit on some branches for the birds and monkeys to eat. New mango tree grew where the animals dropped the seeds. The importance of never robbing Nature is the theme of Divine Fate. “The film explores the opposition between the spiritual and the material, environmental order and industrial chaos.
 
   
Bead game
6 min 30 sec / 1977

As the Inuit woman used seed beads to decorate the Hudson Bay Parkas they made, I Used these tiny colorful beads to draw images, moving them frame by frame under the camera. I spent the next year exploring the theme of aggression and evolution,
 
   
Top priority
9 min 9 sec / 1982

Weapons don’t quench thirst, irrigate land wash clothes. Yet in many countries weapons the priority.
Top Priority deals with how real international needs are not met. The symbols in this film happen to be water and missiles.
 
   
Paradise
15 min 20 sec / 1985

From an Indian childhood cautionary tale a common blackbird a beautiful Divine Bird who nightly performs a dance of illusion and magical transformation for her Emperor. He does not realize that the magnificent Crystal Palace where the bird dances is also her prison ,her gilded cage.
 
   
Afterlife
7 min 12 sec / 1978

Inspired by the research of Elizabeth Kubler - Ross who in the 1970’s studied the phenomenon of near - death experiences this film is the artist’s impressionistic and visionary response to the questions of an after life. The images in the film represent s composite of ancient myths and Tran cultural beliefs,
 
   
How Death Came to Earth
14 min 9 sec / 1970

An ancient folk of India concerning the gods and man, the He- sun and the She- sun ruled the heavens and there was plenty for peasants and princes. The He- moon and the She- Moon lit the earth at night.
Why today there is one Sun, one why there is death.