What Humans Do
Miranda JavidA macro view of human-actions, as told from within a singular body. The film is a catalog of homo sapien instincts: its sequences interlace extractive qualities of our species with embodied sensory experience, producing a mindful awareness of what humans do to their habitats and planet Earth.
Animated frame by frame with biodegradable ink and paper.
Jason Wade
Nadine Chantal LeclercI Dreamed of Seeing Myself
Jamal AdemolaA dream dance of celestial stars illuminate the mystery of a primordial African odyssey. Yrsa Daley Ward breathes life into this otherworldly journey, guided by the soulful resonance of Tunde Adebimpe's voice and poetry written by Jamal Ademola. I Dreamed of Seeing Myself beckons viewers to transcend the constraints of Black trauma and modern white supremacy, persuading them to ponder the lyrical depths of Blackness as the cosmic human beginning.
Starlight Sojourn
Darcy Tara McDiarmid, Chantal RousseauStarlight Sojourn is a collaborative animation project by artists Darcy Tara McDiarmid and Chantal Rousseau. Created from watercolours, fluid acrylic paintings, and digital imagery, it features local fish, birds, and animals traversing a dreamlike night-time landscape in the Yukon.
Dream Reunion
Nadine Chantal LeclercAs a visual artist with a new media background, I translate memories and moments into visual stories using digital techniques. This digital work titled Dream Reunion is an animation about my maternal grandfather. The night before he died in the hospital, he was in and out of consciousness. He awoke and thought he was in Cape North, Nova Scotia. So, I hijacked his final dream, creating a map to guide our reunion back East.
A Little More Connected
There is an app on my phone called Pixel Thoughts. When you open it, a piano tune begins to play while a bright translucent circle appears on the screen with a prompt above it: Put a stressful thought in the star. Beneath the star, a blue cursor blinks and the box asks: What’s bothering you? Once you type your worry into the box, the text appears in the orb. Then the worry begins to get physically smaller, eventually blending with the star speckled background. As it shrinks, the prompts above changes:
Relax and watch your thought
Take a deep breath in
… and breathe out
Everything is okay
Your life is okay
Life is a much grander thing than this thought
The universe is over 93 million lightyears in distance
Our galaxy is small
Our sun is tiny
Our earth is miniscule
Cities are insignificant
You are microscopic
This thought… does not matter
And can easily disappear
And life will go on…
Once the thought has diminished to become one of the many stars in a quickly moving sky, a pop up appears that reads: Hope you are feeling a little less stressed and a little more connected.
I am critical of dismissive language and acknowledge that this app is by no means a solution. It does not address the overarching web of human systems created to enforce and uphold structures of dominance that are so often the cause of anxiety. What it does, however, is remind me that beyond my anxious thought is a city, a planet, a sun, a galaxy, and an entire universe. Rehearsing this play in perspective and extreme zooming out grounds me where I stand. As that big star shrinks and joins all the others, I remember that I am not alone in what I feel, that there is strength and purpose in our connection on this miniscule planet.
Similarly, the animated films by Miranda Javid, Jamal Ademola, Darcy Tara McDiarmid and Chantal Rousseau, and Nadine Le Clerc, in this program remind us that this inhabited world exists despite those who inhabit it, not in spite of us. Together, this selection of short films take us on a journey through a plentitude of experiences, individual and collective, human and more-that-human, as the artists and filmmakers share joyous, complex stories marked by their own ways of being in and with the world.
Tune into Images Festival’s official selection of animated films entitled A Little More Connected, on Saturday morning from 7am until noon at Imagesfestival.com. This program is available to early risers and deep sleepers alike. It is child friendly and, as always, parental discretion is advised.
