All that is solid:
the third Animate OPEN

High Street Repeat
Osbert Parker, Laurie Hill

An experimental, archive-delving collage film originally made as an artists’ commission for the Migration Museum, London. The film uses a range of animation techniques to explore the story of migration and enterprise, told through the changing face of Britain’s high street.

Laurie Hill is an award-winning multi-media animator and director based in London. He often works with archival and found materials. He studied at the Royal College of Art and his work has screened at many festivals and galleries worldwide.

Osbert Parker is Emmy and three times BAFTA-nominated, best known for creating stories that use experimental and innovative film techniques. His award-winning films often combine photo cut-out animation with objects and live action to create imaginary landscapes in mixed media short films, commercials, TV entertainment and online content.

In The Garden: Giggles In The Greenery
Dominica Harrison

Seraphina is lost in the strange Garden. She asks the plants for help. An animated read-along celebrating the prophetic wisdom of more-than-human world. The film is accompanied by a Risograph-printed collaborative graphic novel ‘In The Garden’.

Dominica is an award winning international artist based in UK. She specialises in animation direction and illustration, with a particular focus on printmaking. Dominica is interested in storytelling as a mechanism of learning and social change and exercises play as the main approach to creating work. She draws back from the old forms of storytelling – the myths, the legends, the songs and the cosmogonies.

Silent Panorama
Nicolas Piret

In this animated miniature a drawing gradually comes to life before our eyes, telling a story not only of a wild boar on the run, but also of the ways in which people occupy the places that used to belong to nature. Based on memories of a walk in the Belgian Ardennes. This film was drawn and animated alone on a single sheet of paper as a performance.

Nicolas Piret is a Belgian artist and filmmaker graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and from a master’s degree in animation at ENSAV La Cambre. His graduation short film, La bride – The Dog’s Leash (2022), was selected for the Student Academy Awards ®. Silent Panorama premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam and screenigs include Annecy, Toronto International Film Festival and Karlovy Vary.

NATURA 2040
Hantao Li

NATURA 2040 draws its inspiration from Edward O. Wilson’s Half-Earth theory, which proposes reserving half the planet for nature to address ecological crises. The film envisions an alternative agriculture future where sprawling farmland is compressed into two 100 metre high walls that separate cities from nature. Rather than depicting an  utopia or dystopia, NATURA 2040 explores the interplay between human-made infrastructure and natural ecosystems.

Hantao Li is a director, visual artist and architectural designer based in London. With a background in architecture, Hantao’s work is informed by a deep interest in the hidden power structures embedded within human infrastructure. His practice merges real footage with computer-generated imagery, critically exploring the intersection of society, technology, and the environments that shape the human experience. He has a BA from the Architectural Association, London.

TWENTYTИƎWT
Max Hattler

Shot entirely from an apartment on the 36th floor of a high-rise building, the images in this experimental animated documentary survey large parts of Hong Kong’s cityscape, drawing attention to the individual lives hidden inside its buildings – together alone, collectively sequestered. Initially recorded in 2020 and completed in 2023 with the advantage of critical distance, TWENTYTИƎWT / 二〇二〇 attempts to encapsulate the darkness, confinement, and uncertainty of the year 2020.

Max Hattler is an abstract and experimental animation artist. His work has been shown worldwide. After studying at Goldsmiths and the RCA, he completed a Doctorate in Fine Art at the University of East London. He is a Professor at City University of Hong Kong.

Dull Spots of Greenish Colours
Sasha Svirsky

War for our attention has suddenly become an actual war. Information technologies appear not just as mere means for somebody’s ends but as something having their agency, as one of the acting forces rendering possible a horrific event, which is very hard to accept and almost impossible to comprehend. We have no control over it and are doomed to scroll through the newsfeed.

Sasha Svirsky was born in Soviet Runo village in the USSR and is now based in Berlin.  Having studied painting, he uses animation as an artist’s tool, unlocking the potential for visual experiments and creating philosophical narratives and essays. Screenings of Dull Spots of Greenish Colours include Berlinale and Locarno film festivals. Sasha works in collaboration with Nadya Svirskaia.

Raining through my bones
Meghana Bisineer

Raining through my bones was drawn on the interior walls of a self built bamboo hut on the terrace of the artist’s childhood home in Bangalore, India. Drawing with light, water, natural lime and pigments, the work reflects on home, the queer migrant’s return, and the body as a site of ‘multiple becomings’ in a shifting, ever so precarious time of interconnection and isolation. 

Meghana Bisineer is an Indian-born artist, curator and educator, working across experimental animation, installation, performance and ritual practice. Her works are shown internationally across film festivals, museums, galleries, and artist-lead spaces. She is interested in poetic materiality and the nature of time and personal memory. She studied at the Royal College of Art and India’s National Institute of Design. She is founder and curator of Eyewash Experimental Animation Salon. She is based in Oakland, California, and an Associate Professor of Animation and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts.

Noggin
Case Jernigan

A man builds a memory palace to protect the things he loves after the diagnosis of a rare disease.

Case Jernigan grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. He makes art about illness and masculinity, sharing vulnerable worlds, and values play and rhythm. Residencies include the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Harvestworks, and The Center for Book Arts, New York. Screenings include HotDocs, Hollyshorts, Salute Your Shorts and The Video Art and Experimental Film Festival, New York. He’s a Screen Australia grant recipient and his film eggshell received a Vimeo Staff Pick. He’s made murals, short films and illustrations for media outlets and brands including The New York Times, Vimeo and The Guardian. He studied painting at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and United States William & Mary and the New York Studio School.

Liminal Roots
Aliyah Harfoot

A journey through the memories of a young girl struggling to come to terms with the complexity of her mixed-raced identity.

Aliyah Harfoot is a Welsh, mixed media director, striving to push the boundaries with original, creative animation and currently focused on exploring the combination of stop motion, hand drawn and paper cutout animation. She approaches her films with intuition and spontaneity, guided by the tactile nature of the animation process. Aliyah studied Illustration and Animation at Kingston University, and is a National Film and Television School graduate.

Contradiction of Emptiness
Irina Rubina

The language in which lullabies were sung to me kills. And I am with it. And the lullabies fall silent. An inner monologue between two languages and identities. Between the black and white of the pinscreen.

Irina Rubina is an animation director, producer and animator, based in Stuttgart, Germany. With her company iraru.films she produces and realises short films, music videos as well as hybrid & collaborative projects. She also works as a mentor, lecturer and curator at various institutions. Contradiction of Emptiness was created during a pinscreen animation residency at La Bande Video, Quebec City, Canada.