Melbourne exhibition opens new audience for Mary & Max

The behind-the-scenes exhibition at Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image is connecting young audiences with the characters from Adam Elliot’s claymation film Mary & Max.

“Many schools have taken up programs to allow their students to explore stop-motion animation, and the exhibition gives them an insight into how it’s done on a large scale. While the film is not aimed at children, kids relate to the film on a different level,” ACMI curator Fiona Trigg told Encore.

Mary & Max made a respectable $1.4m at the Australian box office, but the exhibition could see it spark the interest of more people. ACMI hopes the Mary & Max exhibition, which opened on Monday, will benefit from the 600+ people visiting the Screen Worlds permanent exhibition every day. Trigg said the exhibition has been “really crowded”, with significant numbers of school-age children visiting during the first week.

The exhibition features character puppets, sets and props used in the making of the film. Although about 90 percent of the materials used in Mary & Max were destroyed at the end of production, Elliott and producer salvaged the rest. ACMI agreed to store the material on a temporary basis, and the exhibition was developed as a result. The project cost under $30,000.