Heartstrings: Richard Valk & Steven Subotnik

Flying seems to be the theme of my selection. Coincidence or not, both animations below have to do with flying. Or with dreams. The dream to fly or flying to realise your dreams.

Watching his animations for Monty Python, I realised for the first time that animation was not restricted to Disney. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but the world Terry Gilliam created turned ‘that other world’ topsy-turvy. Animation wasn’t just used to evoke a kind of non-existing fairyland, but also to change the ‘real’ world, manipulate it, improve and alienate it. In Miracle of Flight, Gilliam uses all the techniques he previously applied so successfully in his Monty Python animations. At the time, I didn’t know yet I would once go and produce animations, but that the world of animation was one that especially gripped me because of Gilliam was obvious.

This film really kick-started my working life in animation. That’s not entirely true, because in 2000 (two years before Anglobilly), I produced The Dark, a music video for Anouk that was also directed and animated by Rosto. The Dark really gave me a taste for the genre and with Anglobilly Feverson I was convinced: Still, I also soon realised I’d been spoiled with Rosto. The unique world he managed and manages to create with different techniques was unequalled in those days. This procedure of interweaving animation techniques with live action had so far been done by almost nobody. I consider Anglobilly Feverson the bedrock of Valk Productions.

I love Free Radicals for its raw purity. It is a camera-less film, made by scratching directly onto black film stock. Lye restricts his graphic style and focuses entirely on movement. His crude lines are deceptively simple. With just a few graphic marks, Lye creates a strong kinesthetic experience. He conveys the impression of dimensional space, and the inner feeling of dance through timing, tension, and release. Free Radicals is a visceral expression of Lye’s personal sense of movement and energy.

Like a Brueghel painting, every time I look at this film, I see something new. Something in the mix of the apocalypse, poverty, and urban anomie makes the film distinctly American. The first time I saw it, the film seemed like a chaotic mixture of narratives and crude – even ugly – visual styles. But Landscape with the Fall of Icarus has a deep poetic structure, and its ugliness is part of its powerful expressiveness. In this richly layered film, Chris Sullivan creates very human portraits of depressed characters on the margins of society.

This program screened as part of HAFF 2012

Showing in this program