In the Same Breath

Director: Daksha Patel

Year: 2017

The animation was made as a result of an artist’s residency at University of Manchester, and the soundtrack is from voice recordings of interviews by medical humanities researchers at the university. The voices describe sudden and profound changes in people’s lives that alter their perceptions and sense of identity. The animation takes us on a journey through the social, psychological and physiological impact of a life-changing event. It is an intimate portrait of a group of individuals.

Director: Daksha Patel

Year: 2022

A performer is filmed inside a Life Science Museum wearing a costume created from objects preserved and classified in the collections. Children recite the names of species on the red list whilst a scientist carefully labels specimens. The animated film explores themes of biodiversity and human/non-human life.

Director: Tatiana Collet Apraxine

Year: 2028

You awaken on a fog-shrouded shoreline and meet Echo, a strange child with a hole in their stomach. Together you cross a lantern festival where the veil between worlds is thinnest, sail into an ocean that opens beneath you, and descend through a portal into the Underworld. The Underworld moves through different facets of grief: a rave where silhouettes dance in slow motion, indifferent to Echo's attempts to reach them; a frozen sea where giant statues crack open to release a buried memory of a lost mother; a shadow theatre where an anger monster is unleashed, reducing everything to embers. From the embers, a boat carries you into a vast darkness, where Mother appears, and they are finally reunited. You sail together to the Tree of Life, a bioluminescent, cosmic jungle. Echo begs her to return to the World of the Living, but ancestors appear and surround you. She cannot come back - the journey was never about bringing her back. Echo, revealed to be your own child self, dissolves around you as the hole fills with light.