Genres: Animation

  • Nobb, The

    “The Nobb” slaps the face of NFB producers who come to Saskatchewan to teach us here hicks some New Age enlightenment. Colour by Crayola.

  • Shadowy Encounters

    “An extraordinarily provocative film which draws the viewer in with its strange mesmerizing beauty.” – Brothers Quay The film “Shadowy Encounters” is an homage to the work of the Quay Brothers. The film is a synthesis of collaged moving and still images taken directly from the Quay Brothers’ 35mm films and recontextualized in order to metaphorically and responsively capture and reframe the Quay’s films’ qualities. The resultant richly textured and layered imagery delves the labyrinthine and secret realms of the Quay Brothers’ world. In itself, “Shadowy Encounters” is a complete, compelling, mythic and painstaking transcription of an inner journey. It…

  • Cameras Take Five

    The enduring romance of lines is explored in this colourful handmade cameraless animation by Montreal animator Steven Woloshen. Dave Brubeck’s classic jazz standard “Take Five” is the starting point of this abstract visual interpretation. In Cinemascope. “I began this film in my usual fashion, which is to say, I hadn’t planned any narratives, characters or sections as starting points for this animation. As I worked and listened to the track – at least twenty times – the line drawing (representing the sound of a saxophone) was leading me either to one side of the frame or the other. The main…

  • Gymnopedies

    The theme is Weightlessness. Objects and characters are cut loose from habitual meanings, also from tensions and gravitational limitations. A lyric Eric Satie track accompanies the film. Such a portrait seems necessary from time to time to remind us that equilibrium and harmony are possible, and that we will not dissolve into a jelly if we allow ourselves to relax into them. A horseman rides through the landscape, through the town, but never arrives anywhere in particular. An acrobat swings on a rope above a canal in Venice, and is content just to swing there. Nothing threatens to disturb them.…

  • Minuet

    A handmade, minute-made motion picture essay on colour harmonics, visual overtones, and the rhythms of an abstract encounter.

  • Moonlight Sonata

    Animated to the rhythms of Eric Satie’s Gnossienne V. The moon and moonlight are the guiding lights of this visual interpretation, and I have kept the backgrounds in soft greens and blues. Only the cosmic tumbler, whose enigma is emphasized by his red colour, breaks this pattern. Satie’s music simplified and refined the imagery, made it the celestial circus I have always dreamed of. “Moonlight Sonata” begins a new phase in my animation. I am finally getting in touch with the real poetry possible here. All works of art seem to come ready-made with their own sets of rules. And…

  • Robots

    A cameraless animation that spins, spins, spins… we are the robots.

  • Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The

    Using the cut-out style of animation, I tried to marry the classic engravings of Gustave Dore to the classic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge through a classic narrator: Orson Welles. It’s a long opium dream of the old Mariner (Welles) who wantonly killed the albatross and suffered the pains of the damned for it. (LJ) Original narration by Orson Welles; made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. “The film, far from being a mere visual accompaniment to the poem, has an integrity of its own. Throughout the film, serpents, butterflies and other creatures from Jordan’s…

  • Believe

    Using photo-booth animation, two girls try to put together a patchy faith.

  • Slice of Primal Pie

    “Slice of Primal Pie” takes on the challenge of capturing the excitement and spirituality of the percussion group Primal Rhythm in film. Using mixed mediums (Super 8mm, 16mm, animated 35mm stills, colour, b&w, infrared) the images were first shot and edited, then Primal Rhythm composed live to them in the recording studio. As a result this “visual rhythm film” has a very organic feel, as opposed to the traditional slick approach to music videos. “Slice of Primal Pie” is as much about the universal appeal of their music as it is about these self-proclaimed “urban primates.”