creature of the day breaks down creatures in the night

by kit on June 21st, 2009

The creature of the day being myself, as it IS 3pm-ish, and so I wouldn’t be considered a creature in the night currently. Rational aside, I still managed to go to the second half of the animation festival Creatures in the Night last night, which was the open call-for-submissions part of the evening.

I have to admit that I was pretty blown away especially because I honestly find animation a medium with SUCH potential that it often has folks doing pretty annoying stuff. Like performance art, minus the potential. No, no, I’m kidding, I actually think they have a lot in common. Ha ha. Yeah…

One of the night’s crowd pleasures as far as I could tell was this animation from Christophe Jordache entitled, Enola Gay: (Sorry about the shoddy and short quality of this little morcel)

I have been forced, at various times or others, to use toilet paper to draw on in lieu of having anything else that will remotely function as paper, and the results have often been interesting, but it’s a hard medium to tackle. That Jordache drew on it for this entire animation (it was 2 minutes long in duration in total) is pretty amazing, and that his movements are as interesting and convincing as they are is quite unbelievable.

There were other works of greatness as well: Rickie Lea Owens had several very short, irreverant and fun pieces. Joshua Bonnetta’s Parting was an absolutely gorgeous 2 minutes of what seemed like rotoscoped dancers with a haunting soundtrack. Pretty hard to describe unless you see it, which I did, but I was mesmerized in a way that made trying to document it all at the same time quite difficult.

Finally, Karl Lemieux ended the night with an 8 minute 16mm film entitled, Moveuvement de Lumiere/Motion of Light. It looked to me like what might happen if Vic Muniz did a stop motion animation with his chocolate sauce instead of painting the Mona Lisa. Lemieux, who co-founded the film collective Double Negative, is clearly in his element with this intensely meditative and process-based work that is rooted in the experimental.

The funny thing is, I usually hate long animations (and 8 minutes is long for this kind of a thing) and I don’t often like experiemental filmmaking. I was absolutely BLOWN away by this piece however. You should truly try to get your hands on a copy of the film. I kindof couldn’t believe it. My jaw was hanging. I was aghast. For a moment, I was nothing more than a little beastie, scouraging for food and water. I was a Creature In the Night.

Thanks to Elizabeth Belliveau and articule for putting on such an amazing event.