Dark Frames: Animations From Devious and Daring Places
Curator Kelly Sears in attendance
Presented with support from Do713.com
Friday, January 28, 7:30PM
Location: Barnevelder Movement Complex, 2201 Preston
Price: $7 Non-Members (box office only now),
Aurora Members Free
Please note, screening contains mature content.
Animation can be wholesome and charming and good for the whole family. This animated evening will be nothing like that. This program is dark, stormy and full of strange and wry films. The films will range from fictional to documentary to experimental and will feature murder cases from the 1930s, tales of cruising, the darker side of Beethoven’s hearing loss, dragons that grow out of sorrow and much more. Artists include Troy Morgan, Salise Hughes, Jen Sachs, Martha Colburn, Carson Mell, Davy Jones, David OReilly, Lilli Carré, Brent Green, Audrey Lam, and Cosmo Segurson.
Kelly Sears is an animator and filmmaker living in Houston, TX. She is a 2009-2011 fellow at the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her work has been shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Anthology Film Archives, Sundance and in galleries and film festivals internationally.
Special thanks to Do713.com for their support of this program.
The program will include:
Troy Morgan, Dragon, 11 minutes, 2006
After her parents die in a tragic fire, a young girl is sent to an orphanage where she begins sketching fiery visions.
Troy Morgan is a visual artist and filmmaker living and working in Los Angeles. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he studied both film and painting and graduated with a BFA in film. His short animation, Dragon won the Grand Jury Prize for best animated short at the Slamdance film festival 2006. His work has been shown at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The American Cinematheque, Hiroshima Animation Festival, and SXSW.
Salise Hughes, Tidal Wave, 1:30, 2005
One man’s nightmares take physical shape in a rising tide that seems to be taking the form of each and every figure in the crowd.
Salise Hughes is a visual artist who began making experimental films in 2005. She studied visual art at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and the San Francisco Art Institute. Some of the venues her films have screened include International Film Festival Rotterdam; l’Alternative, Barcelona; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Seattle International Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival were she won an award for technical innovation. She currently lives in Seattle.
Jen Sachs, The Velvet Tigress, 2001, 11 minutes
An animated documentary of the 1931 Winnie Ruth Judd "Trunk Murders" trial as it was presented by the sensational press of the time.
Jen Sachs is an award-winning animation director and motion graphics artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Since 1998, Jen has directed and animated several independently produced shorts. Utilizing various styles and techniques, her work reexamines historical and personal narratives to expose multiple layers of a shared reality.
Martha Colburn, Myth Labs, 7:30, 2008
Myth Labs interweaves Puritan visions, folk art, religious allegories and victims of the current Methamphetamine epidemic. This is a film about fear, paranoia, faith and loss of faith and salvation.
Martha Colburn is a filmmaker and multimedia artist. Born in Pennsylvania, she now lives and works between Holland and New York City. Although Ms. Colburn's style is unmistakably her own, the scope of her work is broad and difficult to encapsulate; her expertise (especially in stop-motion animation) have led to teaching, speaking, and lectures at film forums and universities worldwide.
Carson Mell, Field Notes from Dimension X, 4:30, 2008
The first piece of the story of Captain Fred T. Rogard--a one-eyed Native American astronaut with a life challenged by inter-dimensional travel and one short haired woman
Carson Mell was born in Arizona in 1980, the son of a landscape painter and a nurse. Three of his short films have been Official Selections of The Sundance Film Festival and many other film festivals including The San Francisco International Film Festival, Toronto’s “Just For Laughs” Comedy Festival, and Brooklyn’s Rooftop Films. His short fiction has been published in "McSweeney's Quarterly Concern" and "Electric Literature."
Davy Jones, Wild Blood, 4:17, 2009
Wild Blood is the third piece in a trilogy of animated shorts and is inspired by queer zines and the San Francisco homocore music scene of the early 90's and is constructed entirely of xeroxes re-photographed and animated digitally.
David Jones is an artist and experimental filmmaker from Los Angeles. In the last year, he has shown his 2009 trilogy of animated films at the Oberhausen Film Festival, Outfest LA, Mix NYC, Image+Nation Montreal, the Toronto Film Festival, Pink Screens Festival in Brussels, Belgium and at Basso in Berlin, Germany. He can be reached at buckmoon@earthlink.net
David OReilly, Please Say Something, 11 minutes, 2010
A troubled relationship between a cat & mouse set in the distant future.
David OReilly is an animator currently based in Berlin.
Lilli Carré, How She Slept At Night, 3:18, 2006
A man tries to remember his wife as his memory begins to stray.
Lilli Carré was born in Los Angeles, and currently lives in Chicago. Her animated films have screened in festivals throughout the US and abroad, and her books of comics are Tales of Woodsman Pete, The Lagoon, and Nine Ways to Disappear. She also contributes comics to the Fantagraphics anthology Mome and to The Believer magazine. Bits of her work can be seen at www.lillicarre.com
Brent Green, Weird Carolers, 3:48, 2008
A short film about Beethoven near the end of his life.
Brent Green is a self-taught animated filmmaker and artist from Cressona, PA.
Audrey Lam, Underground, 4:15, 2008
Time can fragment and places are malleable in stop-motion photo-collage. Underground is about a girl trapped in an absurd and deceiving terrain, constructed and re-constructed around her.
Audrey Lam was born in Hong Kong and lives and works in Brisbane. Her work has been presented at numerous exhibitions and festivals local and abroad, including Melbourne International Animation Festival, Stuttgart Trick film-Festival, and Yebisu Festival for Art and Alternative Visions.
Cosmo Segurson, Sincerely Yours, 3 minutes, 2007
A disgruntled hotel guests airs his grievances.
Los Angeles native Cosmo Segurson is a filmmaker and musician who’s short films have entertained audiences at The REDCAT, Cinefamily, The Hammer Museum, The Echo Park Film Center, and various theatre’s and galleries in and around Southern California. Working with animation and live action, his films lean towards absurd character obsessions, and luminous in-camera special effects. Look for Segurson’s first feature from 2010: “Nic and Tristan Go Mega Dega?!” a kid’s film for kid’s of all ages, available on Netflix and Amazon.
