Edge of Frame: Collision #3

Introduced by programme curator Edwin Rostron and followed by filmmaker Q&A

Collision is an irregular screening series presenting original, daring and sensorially revitalising animation from around the world. This third selection features a mixture of brand-new works and gems from the last four decades. Collision #3 is an exhilarating journey from vivid, kinetic abstraction to playful and experimental non-fiction, via dysfunctional families, ephemeral bodies and a quick dip in a Hackney reservoir.

Programme:

Pendulum
Stuart Hilton, 1991, 2 min

A hypnotic mantra in the grand tradition of hypnotic mantra-like films. Letraset and ink applied directly to the surface of clear 16mm film. This early gem from Stuart Hilton is presented as a 16mm film print from the collections of the BFI National Archive.

AANAATT
Max Hattler, 2008, 5 min

"Hattler proposes an unusual stop-motion animation, where objects of abstract shape and unknown function move in a space that bears no relationship to any kind of real experience. The various elements move within this three dimensional space, like parts of a dynamic painting that condenses a whole series of references to contemporary art: from the constructivism of Moholy-Nagy, to the historic abstracts of Mondrian and Klee, and on to the more recent experience of conceptual and kinetic art. Changing shapes, plays of colour and transforming surfaces compose a dynamic universe that is both alienating and fascinating at the same time." - Invideo 2010

Royal Flush
Anibal Bley, 2024, 5 min

Commissioned by vocalist Charmaine Lee to accompany her musical collaboration with electronic pioneer Ikue Mori. Bley honours the abstract and evocative sounds of the music to create a vertiginous free fall through the royal flush.

Dinner Time
Kate Renshaw-Lewis, 2019, 4 min

Dinner Time is a hand-drawn animation about the power dynamics within a hyper-nuclear family, focusing on the impact of gender roles on the child.

Souvenir Statuette
Sabine Gruffat, 2024, 13 min

Souvenir Statuette is an animated theory of digital objects and a memory for filmmaker Paul Bush. It is also an experimental video about the aesthetics and material properties of the souvenir tchotchke, these decorative objects we surround ourselves with and live amongst. These objects reveal who we are individually and as a culture. They are how we see ourselves.

Reservoir Film
Lizzy Hobbs, 2021, 1 min

Swimming in West Reservoir in London, painted directly onto 35mm film.

Fusion
Richard Reeves, 2024, 4 min

Investigating interplay between sound and picture.
An experimental animation experience produced by drawing both sound and picture onto 35mm film.
A film without words...
No camera or musical instrument was used.
Sound is produced from handmade graphical patters spliced onto 35mm film optical sound area, then composed frame by frame thereby 'animating' the sounds.
I feel making handmade optical sound shapes directly onto 35mm film compliments the hand drawn images directly onto film.
I wish to project peace into the world.

Bad Yantra Cruel Mantra
Meghana Bisineer, 2023, 3 min

Captivated by a gesture of machismo in Claire Denis’ 1999 film Beau Travail, Bad Yantra Cruel Mantra turns a single gesture over and over itself into a multitude of others. Through repetition an action of domination is turned inside out: moving at speed with a hedonistic intensity revealing the uneasy patterns of violence that ebb and flow through time, the euphoria of the trance, a yearning for connection, and love.

Mudra (Yearning to Be loved)
Meghana Bisineer, 2023, 2 min

Moving with the idea of gesture into mudras from Bharatnatyam, a South Indian classical dance, this animation follows the form of the hand as it creates the symbolic gestures that connect the dance and the dancer with the divine / essence. Telling in this instance a story written via a game of chance, this animation is a reading of four mudras:  Arthapataka (Small Knife) |  Kapitha (Wood Apple / Goddess Lakshmi) | Chandrakala (Crescent Moon) | Aalapadma (Lotus in Full Bloom / Yearning to be loved)

Squish!
Tulapop Saenjaroen, 2021, 18 min

Inspired by overlooked potentials of early animation and the reductive representation of depression in media, Squish! is a meditation on the self through lurid and liquid forms; filtered through both old and foreseeable technology informed by Thai animation history (both as commercial products and as weaponised propagandas) and self-made-self-care contents in contemporary culture to re-question the constant process of constructing and deforming new selves to simulate ‘movements’. By extrapolating and redefining the terms of ‘movement’, be it through psychological, physical or political understandings, the work interweaves the medium of animation with a state of depression to re-comprehending the blurred lines between being inanimate, animating, and being animated.

Sudden Tourniquet
Janie Geiser, 2025, 8 min

Medical illustrations and model buildings merge with images of cultivated and wild plants in an elliptical journey toward ephemerality. Bodies lose their volume and exist, somehow, without flesh. Now they are outlines, traveling through indeterminate spaces, domestic and otherwise. Cut open, but not bleeding, what do we see when we no longer have eyes?

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