Films of Ray Harryhausen

Depot is delighted to screen Jason and the Argonauts on Monday 29 May, preceded by this talk in the studio given by Chair of Trustees Robert Senior. This is the booking page for the talk - tickets for the film must be booked separately.

Ray Harryhausen was born in the USA in 1920 but moved to the UK in the 1960s having learnt, and extended, his craft in stop motion animation from Willis O'Brien, who created the special effects for the groundbreaking 1933 movie King Kong. Harryhausen furthered the technique by creating Dynamation, a system that integrated stop motion creatures with live action characters, but also learnt from O'Brien the importance of emotion and empathy towards the creatures.

Harryhausen's skills with lighting and camerawork furthered the art of special effects long before CGI and were hugely admired and utilised by such luminaries as Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and John Landis. Harryhausen worked in all the main fantasy genres including science-fiction invasion, Arabian Nights and Lost Worlds but is best known for his sword and sandal movies based very broadly on Greek mythology. His seminal movie, which featured some of his most complex effects, was Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts (1963), which at the 1992 Academy Awards, where Harryhausen received a special award, Tom Hanks cited as the greatest movie ever made.