Speaking of animator Paul Fierlinger (as we did yesterday), The Animal Shelter Project and the Humane Society have brought Fierlinger together with cartoonist Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) to create six public service spots based on the book Mutts Shelter Stories.

According to producer Peter Barg, “McDonnell felt Paul’s ability to capture true-to-nature body language was the perfect complement to his famous Mutts characters”. Fierlinger’s feature My Dog Tulip, opens in NYC at Film Forum on September 1st and in LA at the Nuart on October 22nd. You can watch all six spots online at Z Animation.

Paul Fierlinger’s animated feature My Dog Tulip opens an exclusive two-week run on September 1st at the Film Forum in New York. It opens later elsewhere in the US (complete list of cities here). Fierlinger is an exceptional and exceptionally devoted animation filmmaker (he made the artwork for his film with only one other person—his wife, Sandra), and I can’t wait to finally see the results. As this article from the Boston Globe makes clear, the film isn’t conventional animated fare; the book on which its based, by J.R. Ackerley, has been called the “[most] preeminently disgusting of all great dog books” and derided as “meaningless filth about dogs.”

This is a revealing quote from Fierlinger from an interview in The Bark magazine, which says a lot about where he’s coming from:

From a very young age, I disliked Disney and loved The Little Prince because the fox explains to the boy [in The Little Prince] what he must do to tame him, the fox. If the fox would know this, wasn’t he already tame? But instinctively—I was seven or eight at the time—I undersatnd that it shows Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s understanding of nature. He wasn’t violating any rules, whereas Disney violated all the rules of nature. That’s what I want our film to be: the opposite of 101 Dalmatians. So that people would not want to buy a dog after they saw Tulip, like too many people do who watch Disney movies.

As previously noted here, good U.S. distribution for an independent animated feature is very tricky thing to acquire. Nina Paley went the self-distribution route with her film Sita Sings The Blues, while smaller companies like Regent ($9.99), IFC (Mary & Max), Zeitgeist Films (A Town Called Panic), and Gkids (The Secret of Kells) try their best to introduce animated films into the competitive marketplace.

That said, I can report some good news for Paul Fierlinger’s My Dog Tulip. The film has been picked up by Apparition, a fairly new theatrical distributor out of NYC specializing in independent films for the U.S. market. They take on only about 7 films a year and, based on some of their live action acquistions (Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Hope and Jane Campion’s Bright Star), have gained a solid reputation.

Christopher Plummer and Isabella Rossellini voice Fierlinger’s animated tale of friendship between an elderly bachelor and his German Shepherd. The film was awarded Honorable Mention for Best Animated Film at the 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival. Appriation will release Tulip in September 2010.

When I posted about my move to NYC last month, I alluded to the exciting trend of independent animated features being produced on the East Coast. ASIFA-East president David Levy has penned a new column in the ASIFA-East monthly newsletter Anymator about the growth of indie East Coast features. An incredible seven artists out here are working on or have recently completed independent features: Bill Plympton, Michael Sporn, Nina Paley, Paul Fierlinger, Emily Hubley, Dan Kanemoto, and Tatia Rosenthal.

In his article, entitled “Better Late Than Never,” Levy learns more about these features by interviewing four of the filmmakers: Michael Sporn, Nina Paley, Paul Fierlinger and Dan Kanemoto. It’s a pleasure to hear the filmmakers describing the subject matter of their films: the relationship between a WWII pilot and his father, a film based on the memoirs of British author J.R.Ackerley, a biography of Edgar Allen Poe, and an animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Sounds like American animated features are finally growing up.

(Image above from Paul Fierlinger’s My Dog Tulip)