animate!

90 minutes, 1970, US, directed by Peter Watkins

Before one even considers the form and content of his singularly powerful body of work, the remarkable oeuvre of internationalist film-maker Peter Watkins is testament to the many inspirational qualities this committed artist has displayed, over four decades and in the face of concerted institutional and media hostility. [...]

The first sits on a bar stool outside a city centre supermarket exit. A modest, silent figure, a Muslim, he is straight-backed and holds in front of him a small, soft basket, from which erupts a dazzling plumage of peacock feathers, a spray shocking the monotone mood of the churning street.

To Muslims, the peacock is [...]

I believe it’s time to kill animation. Not the animation we watch, but the word we use to label it.

Everyone out there knows that animation means ‘invented’ characters brought to life on the screen by an animator. But those of us inside the world of the moving image, also use the term ‘animation’ to refer [...]

“My dreams move to the rhythm required by long journeys to countries as yet unknown, or to countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible.” Fernando Pessoa

Animation is five things today…

It is what happens when the mind, understanding that, in its strange dance with the world, things become too complex for the vessels generated by low [...]

Image by Sebastiao Salgado, 2005

In the beginning was the image, and the image was black and white. The place is an island in the frozen, southern origin of things. In the foreground, a valley floor, hard with the thinnest scrub and, tailing back into the hills behind, a climbing ridge much like the back of [...]