A founding member of the Winnipeg Film Group and a two-time Academy Award nominee, Richard Condie and his distinctive, viciously droll animated works have been celebrated around the world.

Perpetual procrastination during the creative process (Getting Started), a married couple's spat during an unforeseen nuclear holocaust (The Big Snit), and even 16th century Scottish economist John Law (John Law and the Mississippi Bubble) have all served as Condie's diverse subjects. These caustic parables are as rich in goofy imagery as they are in outré humour.

Condie's dedicated artistry will be in the spotlight at the Winnipeg Film Group's annual fundraiser. Along with a screening of Condie's selected films, University of Manitoba prof Gene Walz will provide an in-person introduction.

Asked to describe Condie's work, Walz sums it up with one succinct word: Zany.

"Condie is concerned with unusual characters suffering the complexities of the world," he says. "The shorts themselves are vivid and very, very funny. His use of distinctive yells, full of agony and frustration, can almost characterize them."

Condie's style is so unique, Walz could even pick it out on an Air Canada flight. After viewing the three-minute Pig Bird (1981) Walz says, "I knew it was either Condie or a rip-off."

The film, made for Customs and Immigration in conjunction with the NFB, concerns the whimsical titular animal unwittingly bringing an epidemic of bugs into Canada.

One of Walz's specialties is animation, something he owes to Condie's work.

"It became my forte after being asked in several places, through various festivals in Montreal and in Europe, how it came to be that a Winnipegger could be nominated for an Academy Award," he says. "It all happened after the regional offices of the NFB opened here, and they decided not to just do traditional documentaries, but also fictional narratives and animation. They got behind Condie and The Big Snit (in 1985), and the rest is history. After all of this, I began to research our significant contribution to the world of animation here in Manitoba."

Condie's last major work was 1996's computer-animated La Salla, which earned him the second of his Oscar nominations. With this ambitious project, Condie had to teach himself new tricks.

"It's a film I know a lot about the making of. Condie had to keep learning new computer programs because the first couple didn't work," Walz says. "People speak about Pixar and how crisp their work looks, but they also have millions of dollars and thousands of employees. La Salla, by and large, was single-handedly Condie."

Still, according to Walz, one of Condie's most mesmerizing works is also the hardest to find; it unfortunately won't be part of the lineup on April 18 due to its format.

"There are three to four minutes of Condie in Heart Land, a 1987 IMAX film that was made when the theatre was installed in Portage Place," he says. "The rest of the films commissioned are all rah-rah and celebratory, but Condie's, which utilizes multiple screens, stands out as the decidedly unenthusiastic of the bunch. It's wry and a darker vision than the rest."

Leave it to Condie to stand out from the pack.

Individual tickets to the WFG Gala are $55. A $35 tax receipt will be provided.

THE ANIMATED IMAGININGS OF RICHARD CONDIE
April 18, 7 p.m., Cinematheque
As part of WFG's Annual Fundraising Gala