art - trevor zammit: August 2009

Resurrectimatooned is a collection of lost artwork from the long forgotten Cartoon-A-maphone Studios, a division of Flim Flam Films. The compilation includes banners, production artwork and animation cells from the Ben Flum Legacy vault. These surviving artworks are all that was recovered from the Harfton Gulch Sinkhole tragedy of 1949.

Few historians remember animation pioneer Ben Flum, a native to Harfton Gulch, Ky. His Cartoon-A-maphone Studios captivated audiences young and old with characters like Captain Mayday, the Atomic Pirate, and Bungo of the Jungo. But sadly there is little to remember him by. Flum’s body of work was washed away one soggy Kentucky morning. In fact Flum’s entire studio disappeared into the abyss when a sink hole opened up and swallowed the Flim Flam Films building. The production crew had been working around the clock to finish a series of commercials for the Happyland Diaper Concern. “The Diaper King” would be the last thing Flum and his staff ever drew.

It wasn’t until 1964 when enough money was raised for a Hartfon Gulch Sinkhole Expedition. Flum Legacy Archivists discovered the animators had shockingly survived the initial sinkhole disaster and were forced, by Flum, to continue their work on the Diaper King commercials. While in the sinkhole they managed to produce two more shorts, “Camel in the Courtroom (a musical)”, and “Bear in a Bottle”. It wasn’t long before Dewey Lake spilled over into the void sealing the animator’s fate for a second time.

The work on display here is all that the Ben Flum Legacy Archive was able to salvage.