ASTRAKAN

A Paw Over Dark

A washed up actor performs night after night in a grimy theater to a nearly empty audience. However, everything changes when a clueless dog jumps on stage.

HYPERSONIC Music Club

In 2017, a short anime film called Hypersonic Music Club was produced in Japan. It was directed and written by Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran of the industry who passed away in April 2021. For various reasons, this short anime was never released. It was made public on August 1, 2023.

Orbit

The sun’s energy circulates throughout the earth, feeding the cycle of life. Everything is connected in a natural loop, which repeats, like the circular discs of magical optical toys. This perfectly balanced rhythm is disrupted by human excess, throwing the cycle out of orbit and temporarily stopping the circulation of energy in nature.

All Souls Carnival

Len Lye usually timed his films with great care to match their soundtracks, but for All Souls Carnival, he and composer Henry Brant worked separately, preferring to see if the score and visual track would synchronise by chance. Lye also experimented with a new Direct Film technique, drenching the filmstrip in colourful paint and marker pen.

Minuet

An essay in colour harmonics and visual overtones. Conceived and produced as part of the Images Film Festival's Minute Movies.

Love

A strange wire-fingered homunculus navigates through his dreams of different faces and faces, traversing a subliminal and endless variety. They are all different faces, but all have huge eyes that are questioned as to what keeps them apart, perhaps left broken by an impossible love.

African American Express

African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.

Squares

An abstract computer-generated film. The image is of squares revolving in space around and through each other. Colors and forms multiply and divide against a beautiful symphonic score by George Kleinsinger.

L'etranger: Air is on Fire

Machinima-adaptation of Albert Camus book "L'étranger", done in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Ghost Town

Seraphim Cloud and his life size doppelgänger enter the netherworld of Calico Ghost Town deep within the Mojave Desert.

Revelation To The Disembodied

Fragments of a collective post-human dream construct a world that straddles hyper-technological, ecological, and mythological dimensions.

Gemini

Sarah and her two cats go about their separate lives. The cats have strange dreams about their desires, and Sarah develops an unshakable paranoia that something is wrong with them. Sarah's paranoia bleeds into her social life, and her two cats have their dreams come true.

Oblivion

A lone passenger is reflected in the windows of a train crawling through layers of textures towards Minsk. During his absence, the city has not changed: all the streets are frozen, long-gone voices can be heard in the empty rooms and around the corner you can find yourself in a video game from your childhood.

Dull Hope

Suppressed memories reach a boiling point. An animated tale of longing. “The Experimental section saw Non Films’ Dull Hope scoop the premier place as category winner. Half animation and half movie footage, this hybrid resonated very much with the judging panel who deemed it to be a sad dirge on personal memories and heartbreak.” – The Guardian Directed & Animated by Brian Ratigan Music & Sound Design by Nick Punch (R.I.P.) Produced by Non Films

undressed

behind the scenes

An experimental documentary/animation hybrid exploring likeness scanning, AI, and what that means for identity.

Mothlight

Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.

Eye Myth

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Revolution or Bust

A surreal music video where a pop-up world of greed, rebellion, and revolution unfolds as cherubs, a devil, and a modern-day Jesus clash in a satirical battle for justice.