A freewheeling cinematic experience, this film is the work of two filmmakers who relate their perceptions of each other through their respective animation techniques. Images and words are paired in startling associations. Each does a visual portrait of the other, based on characteristic gestures and impressions. A combination of techniques and materials produces a film of rich visual texture shaped by the hands and heads of two very different people.
Category: Short
A portrait of Raymond Francombe, jobbing gardener and composer. Ray is a familiar figure around the centre of Bristol. What will not be known by most of those who pass him every day is that for years he has been composing sacred music – and, until this programme was made, he had never actually heard a note of it performed. In this film Derek Jones gets to know Ray, and attempts to have his music professionally assessed.
A young man is in love with an image in a picture frame. To find out if the love he feels is returned he picks a flower and starts picking the petals off it.
A young woman awakens in a hospital bed, as she staggers to her feet the world around takes on an otherworldly ambience. Her circular, unending life revolves into a nightmarish loop as she confronts herself and her dead end existence.
The lyric passage of a Monarch butterfly, beginning with its birth, through its delicate metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly and on its journey from country to city. From the first frame, the audience experiences the tension of this perilous flight as numerous adversaries, threaten the butterfly’s freedom.
Hot Breath Harry is a hot trumpeter at a jazz club. He finds himself drafted into the Army, where he’s assigned to be the bugler of an African-American company. But everyone hates the bugler, because he blows reveille at the ungodly hour of 5 AM sharp. Sure enough, on his first day, Harry gets pelted with everything imaginable. He lands against a wall, where his trumpet falls on him. He plays a swinging wakeup that segues into the title tune, and nobody minds waking up to this. Everyone swings through the whole day, even when three soldiers march into a lake and two soldiers, followed by a grinning alligator, march out.
This entertaining animated film surveys the history of machines, showing how the discovery of primitive tools led to the development of today’s space age technology. A tribute to human ingenuity and creative genius.