A narrative self-discovery theme done in real time in Art Nouveau style.
The scene is set in front of a French chateau. The camera chases improbable incidents across the screen. Many are constructed out of one of Jordan's favorite engravings illustrators: Poyet. Duels occur on a tight rope. Heavier-than- air machines fly (and sometimes crash). Below guns spear exploding spheres. The timing of the animation is exquisite, existing in an atmosphere balanced between frenzy and delight.
Meet 5000 space aliens in 5000 seconds in this bonkers animated film.
A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity. An alternate ending to the television series "Neon Genesis Evangelion", which aired from 1995 to 1996 and whose final two episodes were controversial for their atypically abstract direction.
Orchids,… centers on an animated video in which Marten sets forth a sanitised and alluring world of free-floating and fragmentary objects. Excised from normal context and imbued with an impossible cosmetic sheen, these crystalline forms are conjured in colours that range from the surreally heightened to the deliberately banal. A line of toy-like objects – a train, a giraffe on wheels, a boat – trundles along on an impossibly turquoise plane. Parasitically followed by a swirling black fly, the unfolding narrative is one of production, consumption and saturation. Elsewhere, the naked human backside of the title (cropped and anonymous) is shown with a luridly-glowing orchid tucked between its buttocks. At points, the imagery takes on the semblance of a painting or diagram, both formulaic ‘analogues’ of reality, like the video itself, implying the knotty weight of a Cézanne still life.
To fly a – way from/out of death, don’t hire a taxidermist but take a ride in this taxidrome! Series of 41 Moving Images - this analogy is possible being conservation at its core rescuing what really matters in the world, like nature, habitats, science and art. It is vital. Yet in a continuously changing environment, the flipside of conservation becomes and here it is where the vital feature of conservation becomes its lifelike trait, a fictive life, a fake life. The embalming process consists of 1) imparting a balmy essence to the dead body, as in the ancient world, 2) by filling its blood vessels with formaldehyde to prevent putrification, as in the modern world, although recently with more regard towards more natural treatments, as for instance in bio-art. To embalm also means to “preserve from oblivion”, and “to cause to remain unchanged”, “to prevent the development of something”.
An anthology of one-minute films created by 60 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.
The corner of a street is matched and mixed with the chant of a bird recorded on that same street. A symbiotic relationship is triggered: the rapid and successively repetitive montage cuts between the image of the street and the corners of the video frame itself produce new textures and shapes in our brain, whilst the sound follows the same rhythmic movements by emphasizing different “corners” (frequencies) from the bird’s singing. The energetic potency stemming from the junction of these elements creates a new image that is almost tactitle, maleable and rippling. The result is a somewhat humorous operation of the portuguese word "corner" throughout the different stages of making the piece, finally unveiling a piercing physical and kinetic experience for all the corners of our eyes and ears.
3-minute experimental animation based on the techniques of John Whitney.
A film in which the one 60-story skyscraper that soars in the spaces between roofs spins with incredible speed. I centered the circumference with its 400 or 500 meter radius on the skyscraper and divided it into 48 sections, then took photographs from those spots and shot the photographs frame by frame.
We are first presented a cobweb castle, filled with the haunting doubts of the young protagonist. Spirits appear on the screen and are heard on the soundtrack. Gradually a female guide emerges and escorts the young man into an antechamber to another (and possibly higher) world.
For the first time I am animating hand-painted engraved cut-outs on a full-color background. The film is mood-filled: A duel scene in a snowy forest, obviously the morning after a masquerade ball. Harlequin lies dying, while Red Indian walks away with the wings of victory. The woman between them appears, cat-masked. The mask dissolves away. Her spirit passes into the face of the sun upon the sun upon the sun flower. But Harlequin cannot escape death. The blue world engulfs him.
Slow disintegration and aging of artists head, revealing underlying bone structure. Created using old picture-phone technology. New music added in 2013.
Creeping from the halls of the maze brain, corruption and terror is woven by devils born from the denied errors of mankind.
Initially commissioned to accompany a Danish production of Alban Berg’s LULU, Lewis Klahr’s cut-out animation refigures the opera's themes in a torrent of images. With an ever-inventive approach to color and symbol, Klahr distills the title character's moral predicament, along with a great many of German Expressionism’s characteristic motifs, in the span of a pop song.
A tilted figure, consisting largely of right angles at the beginning, grows by accretion, with the addition of short straight lines and curves which sprout from the existing design. The figure vanishes and the process begins again with a new pattern, each cycle lasting one or two seconds. The complete figures are drawn in a vaguely Art Deco style and could be said to resemble any number of things, an ear, a harp, panpipes, a grand piano with trombones, and so on, only highly stylized. The tone is playful and hypnotic.
The walls of video rental shops in Japan are lined with hundreds upon hundreds of animation DVDs, but experimental and art animation on DVD are rare. To remedy this situation, Image Forum put together this showcase of the work of contemporary avant-garde animators trained in Kyoto and Tokyo.