It’s no secret that we are hugely proud of our relationship and work with our friends at Manchester Animation Festival – year on year the festival grows in stature and we are so happy to be part of that journey.
With MAF being the UK’s largest animation festival, this is obviously something that Manchester can hang its hat on so we wanted a local interest news story that represented the Mancunian input into something so amazing.
Upon scouring the content, we found ‘Bloomers’ made by animated documentary maker Samantha Moore along with composer Malin Bång and producer Abigail Addison as part of The Happiness Machine, a project that paired up 10 European female animation directors with 10 female contemporary music composers to contribute to an original orchestral piece that would be performed live all over the world, and is a portrait of Headen & Quarmby a knicker factory in Middleton, Manchester.
When researching the film Samantha spent a lot of time in the factory drawing the workers, and chatting to them about their backgrounds. Hazel, who works in the factory office doing the accounts, has been involved with the factory since she was a child because it was her parents, Mary and Eric, who set up the factory when they were teenagers and her son David now co-runs the factory.
We got straight on the blower to Samantha followed by a call to David at the factory to garner all of the information that we required to make a pitch on this happen.
As a result, not only did BBC Radio Manchester interview Samantha live on air, they sent a team up over to Headen & Quarmby to interview the factory workers and the family that own it for a package that eventually ran across a number of days featuring on the Sunday Breakfast Show, the Mike Sweeney Show, the Phil Trow Show and numerous times on the Breakfast Show with Chelsea Norris.
As I write, I am leaving screening of The Happiness Machine. It was a big success and the Headen & Quarmby team were in attendance to see themselves in animated form on the big screen – they were so pleased that they were able to tell their story on the radio and we were so pleased that we could help make this happen.
We’re all off to the Premiere screening of Netflix’s Klaus so we better run!
Tom x
Images courtesy of Manchester Animation Festival
“The extended event is the largest of its kind in the country and will feature talks, feature films, shorts, workshops and networking events.” – Prolific North
