continuum Film Screenings

Imagining Time

Jelena Sinik / 2015 / 2 mins / 2D drawn animation / G / ©︎ Jelena Sinik

Adapted from the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, Imagining Time is designed in a split screen format that reimagines Eliot’s cyclical thought processes. This wordless, visual interpretation of Eliot’s poetic monologue is a contemporary response to the poem’s recurring phrase “There will be time”. The animation combines themes of isolation, introversion and passivity from the poem, adopting a stylistic approach akin to magical realism and surrealism. It portrays disruption in the everyday experience, while tackling issues around mental health and identity.

Bright Spots

Jilli Rose / 2016 / 8 mins / 2D animation / English / G / © 2016 Jilli Rose

Bright Spots is a poetic portrait of scientist Nick Holmes and his work preventing island animal life extinction. 80% of the world’s extinctions have occurred on islands. In the 1990s, two surfer/biologists decided to address this issue. Today, their company Island Conservation employs dozens of people around the globe, who remove feral animals from islands in order to prevent local extinctions and make our world a little more hope filled. Filmmaker and animator extraordinaire Jilli Rose interviewed chief scientist Nick Holmes under a tree at the IUCN World Parks Congress. The resulting film is part nature documentary and part fairy tale that is chock full of blindingly beautiful, big-hearted science.

Grace Under Water

Anthony Lawrence / 2014 / 8 mins / Stop-motion animation / English / G / © Anthony Lawrence Plasmation 2014

Lou is losing a cold war with her stubborn but enigmatic stepdaughter Grace, when an unexpected challenge arises from a warm afternoon at the local pool. Shadows from the past bear onto the present as Lou is forced to face the truth about herself and the frustrating child she is trying to love. Sometimes to find the connection you have to dive deep. To dive deep, sometimes you have to climb high. And you seldom get permission for that. Grace Under Water is an eloquent exploration of the balance of fear and delight, estrangement and closeness that only a family can understand.

Kardiyarlu Kangurnu: Mujunyku (It Came with the White People: Rabbits)

Simon Japanangka Fisher (Junior), Jonathan Daw, Jason Japaljarri Woods, Shane Jupurrurla White, Pintubi Anmatjere Warlpiri (PAW) Media and Communications / 2016 / 6 mins / Stop-motion animation / Warlpiri with English subtitles / G / ©︎ PAW Media 2016

Kardiyarlu Kangurnu: Mujunyku (It Came with the White People: Rabbits) is a short film produced by PAW Media in 2015 that uses a mixture of live interview footage and claymation. Tess Napaljarri Ross tells the story of Warlpiri people’s first encounter with mujunyka (rabbits) in the early 1900s and the subsequent realisation that these strange new creatures were good to eat. But where did these strange creatures come from? This unique piece was written, directed and animated by Simon Japanangka Fisher, Jonathan Daw, Jason Japaljarri Woods and Shane Jupurrurla White. It is one of PAW Media’s many claymation films created with and by Warlpiri storytellers and filmmakers.

Lifeblood

Nicholas Tory in collaboration with Aunty Dot Martin and Phill Sullivan / 2021 / 21 mins / 2D & 3D animation / English / G / Lifeblood ©︎ 2021 Ample Projects

The film takes place in Bourke, a town in far north-western New South Wales on the edge of the Central Australian desert. Bourke is a forgotten place, but an undeniably beautiful place. This was the film’s inspiration – a beauty that you have to slow down and look closely to see. The filmmakers wanted to highlight white Australians’ disconnection with First Nations culture and ways of life, The Stolen Generation and ideas around being part of a place and an ecosystem, not imposing ourselves on our environment. In these ways, Lifeblood is a call to rethink ongoing environmental and cultural apathy in Australia.

Creative Evolution

Song Yungsung / 2019 / 5 mins / Animation drawn on paper / UNCL: all ages / ©️ 2019 ICE BUTTER / SONG YUNGSUNG

This film is based on Henri Bergson’s book Creative Evolution and the art history related to the birth of Robert Delaunay’s abstract art works. The creative worlds of Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Robert Delaunay and many other artists are connected to each other and the new story of evolution of life begins.

House Rattler

Shinobu Soejima / 2019 / 6 mins / Stop-motion / Japanese with English subtitles / UNCL: all ages / © 2019 Shinobu Soejima

House Rattler is about a house rattling spirit that has lived in an old house for generations. However, the old woman who is the latest resident of the house can no longer hear the noises the spirit makes. This leaves the house rattler filled with a sense of longing.

A Bite of Bone

Honami Yano / 2021 / 10 mins / Animation drawn on paper / Japanese with English subtitles / UNCL: all ages (themes surrounding death) / ©︎ 2021 Honami Yano/ Au Praxinoscope

In Bite of Bone, a little girl attends her father’s funeral, where she reflects on her last summer with her father. Set on a small island in Japan where the director was born and raised, the film explores the relationship between the death of the girl’s father and the bomb storage in the mountain behind the family house.

Ngayuku Papa: My Dog Tiny

Cynthia Burke, Jonathan Daw and Tjanpi Desert Weavers / 2017 / 3 mins / Stop-motion animation / Ngaanyatjarra with English subtitles / G / © Tjanpi Desert Weavers 2017

Through the unique and creative medium of Tjanpi, Cynthia Burke tells the story of her beloved papa, Tiny. Together Cynthia and her papa live, work, travel and bring up children and puppies. Ngayuku Papa: My Dog Tiny tells a story of remote community life and a beautiful friendship between a woman and a dog, and is part of the Tjanpi project Papa Tales about remote desert community life, the amusing personalities of local dogs and the companionship they offer in Indigenous communities. At its core, Tjanpi embodies the energies and rhythms of country, culture and community.

Cooked Episode 4: The DKI 

Jake Duczynski / 2021 / 8 mins / 2D and 3D animation / English / M (coarse language) / © 2021 Jake Duczynski, Studio Hackett

In 2020, Australia’s Prime Minister announced that the HMS Endeavour, which sits motionless shackled to the docks of Darling Harbour, will once again sail the seas. With this decision, the PM unwittingly awakens the ghost of ship’s dead captain James Cook. He re-unites with Mahnra, an Indigenous woman’s spirit trapped inside the body of a goat. They steal the Endeavour and travel across Australia in search of a cure for a mysterious 250-year-old spell. To do so, they must consult the oldest surviving knowledge keepers – the First Nations people and spirits from the Dreaming Knowledge Institute (DKI). Mahnra and Cook are thrust into the DKI and are met by the all-knowing, all-seeing monolithic spirit head, who has big plans for Cook.

The Lost Sound

Steffie Yee / 2020 / 2 mins / Stop-motion and 2D animation / Japanese with English subtitles / G / ©︎ Steffie Yee 2020

A woman looks at the inheritance of language in her family and laments what is lost when a language disappears. The Lost Sound explores a range of handmade and mixed media animation techniques, including strata-cut plasticine animation, pencil on paper, and ink animation. Underneath all the colourful animation techniques is a poignant story of a woman struggling to communicate with her elders. Inspired by the poem On Ç by Hiromi Itō, a woman looks at the matrilineal inheritance of linguistic tones in her family, mourning the parts of languages that become extinct through semantic evolution, and how this can cause a generational gap between family members.

Kardiyarlu Kangurnu: Bullocks (It Came with White People: Bullocks)

Simon Japanangka Fisher (Junior), Jonathan Daw, Jason Japaljarri Woods, Shane Jupurrurla White, Pintubi Anmatjere Warlpiri (PAW) Media and Communications / 2016 / 4 mins / Stop-motion animation / Warlpiri with English subtitles / G / ©︎ PAW Media 2016

Anmatjere Elder, Jack Jangala Cook, shares his story of first encounter with Kardiya (white people) and with bullocks (beef cattle). He recalls his childhood and how the white station owners rounded up Jack and his friends as children to train to be stockmen and how they were used to break in the horses for the European stockmen.

Castle

Ryōtaro Miyajima / 2019 / 5 mins / Animation drawn on paper / UNCL: all ages / © MIYAJIMA ANIMATION

During the period of the Province at War, many lives were lost. In Castle, a castle architect discovers the possible role of a tearoom as a place for warriors to regain humanity.

Polar Bear Bears Boredom

Kōji Yamamura / 2021 / 7 mins / Animation drawn on paper / Japanese and English subtitles / UNCL: all ages / ©︎ Yamamura Animation

Polar Bear Bears Boredom is about a polar bear who is very bored with various marine animals in the deep blue sea.

Inspired by the 12th and 13th Century Japanese picture scroll Bird and Beast Character Caricature, this animation presents one unfolding scroll of Japanese and English wordplay about marine animals. It continues an ancient scroll painting tradition of caricatures of frolicking animals by rendering sea animals in animation form. The film features Japanese and English language wordplays: ‘Hokyoku-guma suggoku hima / Polar bear bears boredom’, ‘Kawauso kawaisou / Other otter, poor otter’ and so on.

Bath House of Whales

Kiyamamizuki / 2019 / 7 mins / Animated paint on glass / UNCL: all ages / ©️ 2019 Kiyamamizuki / Tokyo University of the Arts All Rights Reserved

In a small town somewhere in Japan, the neighbourhood mothers end their day at the public bath. When a little girl goes along to the baths, she is awed by a group of bathing women who behave very differently from the others. In this group is the girl’s own mother, who blends in perfectly. Bath House of Whales is a mesmerising paint on glass animation based on the filmmaker’s memories of accompanying her mother, a person of Korean descent living in Japan, to the public baths.

Presented by

Venue Partner