Exile is an intimate look at identity through the eyes of a young British Nigerian woman. It interweaves contemporary dance inspired by African masquerade, and documentary footage from Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria to give a distinct and personal narrative.
A young man walks the streets and stations of a busy city armed with his camera; recording and observing from the safety zone behind his lens. On a train a young woman brings him face to face with two kinds of beauty and perhaps one missed opportunity.
An experimental film essay investigating the cultural importance of cinema. In an age dominated by the moving image what would it feel like to never see an image of the place that you came from?
The Palestinian Film Archive contained over 100 films showing the daily life and struggle of the Palestinian people. It was lost in the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. Here interviewees describe from memory key moments from the history of Palestinian cinema. These scenes are drawn and animated. Where film survives, the artist's impressions are corroborated. This is a film about reconstruction and the idea that cinema is an expression of cultural identity - that cinema fuels memory.
Smoke is used as a device to exploit extreme contrasts of light and dark. This theme of contrast echoes throughout the work as notions of presence and absence oscillate, and redundant, toxic waste is briefly transformed into a magnificent celebration of 'being' before gently dissipating into infinite time and space.
Francis is an account of the creation of a 9-year-old 'defective' animated character. As the draughtsman’s hand goes to work and Francis attains animated consciousness, his behaviour is observed and assessed by a child psychologist. The boy’s responses – initially slow and apparently flawed – develop in unusual comic directions as the examination progresses.
As his vocalisations begin to address the nature of his animated world and the psychologist continues to try and interpret his actions, it appears that Francis may ‘break out’ once and for all and become a ‘real’ animated character. Francis playfully addresses notions of construction and the role that language plays in interpreting, classifying and creating certain types. In an animated world populated by impressionable idiot figures, mischief-makers and oddballs with strange vocal mannerisms, Francis puts the cute but simple cartoon character into therapy for a case study of 'animated behaviour'.
Investigative journalist, Chris Davenport, is hot on the trail of the mysterious Bug-man: a serial killer with a penchant for pulp horror novels. Desperately trying to convince the long-suffering Detective Jamison to listen to his outlandish theories is no easy task and things become all the more complicated when Davenport becomes embroiled in several strange incidents within his tiny community. As he tries to deal with crazy genius doctors, sarcastic book clerks, post-modern voodoo and alien-robot space porn, Davenport discovers that, deep inside all the weirdness, is a link back to his own troubled childhood.
I am a Horse
I am a horse was a sculpture by David Salkeld. Derived from Halysites and siderite fossilised corral, which is expressed in a delightful free flowing ocean like style in its sense of play and movement.
The project was to recreate the sculpture as something new - an experimental animation. Working with the sculptor to recreate I am a horse in 3D animation as close as possible to the original sculpture, where the allusion of complex interlocking shapes was created out of one solid piece of wood in a series of components forming the impression of a horse.
The animation depicts the the sculpture forming out of the coral and fossilised formations and sea, and will express the natural flow of the shapes and sense of fun of the original design, before dissolving back into the sea.
'identities' charts the multicoloured, multicultural transgender community in Ireland. Five personal stories give shape to the vibrant, parallel worlds of Transvestism, Transsexualism, Drag, Sexual identity, and Gender Dysphoria.
Intercutting black and white interviews with fly on the wall footage, each character's daily experience is laid bare. Vivid art performances offer more abstract and deeply personal self-representation. Opening our eyes to the potential of existing in fantasy, reality is thrown into sharp relief. At its heart, this is a film about the human spirit. Overcoming stereotype and categorisation, the gender construct breaks open, allowing personality and human emotion a path to expression.
Passenger planes and tall buildings. A contemporary haunting. We are constantly reminded of the horrors of such real events in the recent past and are regularly forced to revisit them.
Landing Lights is more of a dream than a nightmare and as such could be read as something of an antidote to the prevailing politics of fear.
Several diverse characters recite part of a poem called Gold From the Stone written by Lemn Sissay. Each character is in a different location and time zone but the same country and the same City. We jump from one character to the next fragmenting their monologues further isolating them- are they real people?
