Introduced by programme curator, Edwin Rostron
A selection of unique and sometimes unnerving animated films, depicting personal (and actual) apocalypse. Each of these films has its own boldly experimental formal language, perfectly matched to the intensity of its mood. These mysterious works of dreamlike beauty and nightmarish terror speak directly to our unconscious as they explore the horrors and fears of late capitalist existence.
*This programme features strobing which may affect photosensitive viewers.
Someone Behind the Door Knocks at Irregular Intervals
James Lowne, 2010, 5 min
Julia spends the day at the leisure centre where she slips into a sombre reverie.
Flower
Naoko Tasaka, 2013, 21 min
A sphinx-like allegory that plumbs the depths of physical and metaphorical surfaces, Flower hov-ers between straightforward narration and sublimated abstraction.
Eclipsed
Jamie Wolfe, 2022, 2’30 min
Tensions rise in the final hour of the solar eclipse.
Vacation
Yifan Jiang & James J.A. Mercer, 2022, 25 min
Vacation follows a protagonist road tripping home from college. A sudden volcanic eruption totals his car and destroys all his possessions. Barely surviving, our destitute star builds a life for himself out of furniture that has washed up on the shore, making an unremarkable patch of beach his home.
Alone with the Moon
Peter Burr, 2012, 14 min
"You are on a train and you are in a well and you are lying beneath the nighttime sky and as your eyes open and close, you find yourself learning not what looking feels like (as Bridget Riley painted) but what feeling looks like. There is no landscape without a body and no vision without a self. Your Self is black and white, inside and outside – an optical illusion in an infinite bardo plane." - Ben Russell
This programme is presented as part of London International Animation Festival 2022. More info: http://www.liaf.org.uk and https://www.edgeofframe.co.uk/events/