Tomm Moore, a talented anime filmmaker inspired by Irish folklore

MEKNES – Talented Irish filmmaker, animator, illustrator and comics artist Tomm Moore gave a thorough illustration of his prolific artistic path to the audience at the Meknes International Animated Film Festival (FICAM).

Moore’s passion for film and animation began during his early mid-teens when he joined the Young Irish Film Makers in Kilkenny in Ireland. He showcased some of his drawings from his sketch book.

He said that he found a connection between meditation and drawing when he went to France for a meditation course.

 It took Moore a lot of work to do to make his first film “The Secret of Kells” about the making of the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript from the 9th Century as it needed considerable time and financing.

“The Secrets of Kells” is the first installment in Moore's "Irish Folklore Trilogy", preceding the films “Song of the Sea” and “Wolfwalkers”.

The Irish filmmaker said that the “Book of Kells” was an inspiration for his movie.

“If you have only one influence you just copy, but it you have many influences, you get more ideas,” he said.

Moore revealed that he felt he has been in the wilderness between 1999 and 2009 until “The Secret of Kells”, a haunting blend of history, fairytale and pure invention, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature film in 2010.

“The prizes and nominations encouraged me to do something different with the support of Pixar and others,” he said.

Moore’s second film “Song of the Sea” is a nostalgic film. It was about the Irish folklore, authentic thing and family.

While making “Song of the Sea”, Moore was asked to co-direct with Ross Stewart a 5-minute segment of the “Prophet”, a film produced by Salma Hayek and adapted from Kahlil Gibran's book of prose poetry essays.

“I used the language of drawing in The Prophet which I inspired from North Africa. There was a synergy between drawing and the music,” he said.

“There is something magic that can be done in short films,” he added.

As for his third directorial feature film “Wolfwalkers”, the final installment in his "Irish Folklore trilogy", Moore said that he tried to bring some of what was done in the Prophet to it.

Moore noted that art can be powerful tools to raise consciousness among people globally when he played Greenpeace UK’s short film “There’s A Monster in My Kitchen" Animation” which he co-directed during the coronavirus pandemic.

He used his Peruvian nephew in the short film, which is a powerful horror story of a little boy who finds a scary ‘monster’ in his kitchen - a huge jaguar who reveals that he’s here to warn him. The real Monsters are in fact the industrial meat companies burning down his forest home and destroying natural habitats to grow animal feed for meat. The realisation that industrial meat is the biggest cause of global deforestation leads the little boy to decide to “eat more plants and veggies and to fight these Monsters so our planet can renew.”

Moore said that he went back to drawing portraits of famous and non-famous people via Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic during which people had been under lockdown for several days across the globe to stem the spread of the rapidly contagious virus.

The 20th edition of FICAM, is organised by the Aicha Foundation and the French Institute May 6-11 in Meknes, Morocco.