Projects matching: Richard Squires

Synopsis

A stranger in the family becomes a ghost child and awakens the monsters and desires of a queer childhood... THE PERPETRATORS collages film, animation and archive in a dreamy autofiction of queer darkness, incorporating 1980s Stranger Danger, the construction of homosexual identity and the institution of the family.
Official Selection Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023

Synopsis

Where does the character end and the actor begin? This debut feature from UK artist-filmmaker Richard Squires, is a creative documentary that employs 'Clovis', an animated antihero (voiced by 'Kids in the Hall's' Mark McKinney) as a means to explore the particular “voice” casting of cartoon villains in the late 1960s. Through the lens of one of Hollywood’s hidden queer histories, this documentary offers a contemplation on the psycho-social relationship between villainy and hysterical male laughter; the use of voice as a signifier of ‘otherness’ and the frequently uneasy symbiosis of character and actor.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2019 - Bright Future - International premiere

Synopsis

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'.