The second episode ofthe series“Wasteland” by this experimental film-makerwhose preferred medium is animation (the first one, Ardent, verdant, had premiered in Locarno in 2017 in the Pardi di domani section), Ardent, Hardy, Hearty featuresrapidly-succeeding visual juxtapositionsin which nature is confronted with ice, death, and re-birth. Opposite to the general theme, the vernal colours and delicate shapes – which seem to aspire to abstraction byway ofswiftness – build up to a crescendo."Can it be true,"said the first leaf,"can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we're gone and after them still others, and more and more?" "It really is true," whispered the second leaf. "We can't even begin to imagine it, it's beyond our powers," murmur the leaves in Bambi’s fable (not coincidentally, it was adapted in one of the most loved Disney films). However, no dialogues are to be found in Mack’s animated collages, which are reminiscent of paintings unravelling through time.
Jodie Mack (London 1983) is an experimental animator who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Combining the formal techniques and structures of abstract/absolute animation with those of cinematic genres, her handmade films use collage to explore the relationship between graphic cinema and storytelling,the tension between form and meaning. Mack's 16mm films have screened at a variety of first-class festivals worldwide and have been discussed in publications such as Artforum, Cinema Scope, The New York Times, and Senses of Cinema. She was a Roberta and David Logie/Film Study Center Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Fellow at the Film Study Center Fellow at Harvard University. She is a 2019 Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts and an Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College (USA).
USA/2019, 7’