#animate projects

I Don’t Protest, I Just Dance In My Shadow (2017)

A short visual essay film by artist animator, Jessica Ashman, about navigating the visual art and animation world as a black face in a white space.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a potential project idea. The style of this animation really caught my fancy. More so than ever, I’ve experienced anxiety in public spaces, particularly in the subway. How do I to create the inner world of brain onto the outer world?

A new commission with Animate projects and Wellcome Trust. A collaboration with Dr Peter Oliver about the science of sleep. The film will be ready in November 2015

Nisha Duggal: I’m interested in why you choose to display your films as gallery installations as opposed to cinema screenings? Do you see your position as an artist as very different to that of a filmmaker, and why? 

Matt Stokes: 

Because a gallery setting allows much more control over how a work should be seen and experienced, such as the scale relative to the viewer, whether an audience sits or stands and so on, and this is really important in many works.

 I’m an artist who uses film, but that doesn’t make me a filmmaker – which I think is another realm. As an artist the idea of how film is used can be approached slightly differently. Also, I don’t solely make films – past projects have taken many different approaches and outcomes.



Read the rest of this interview at Animate Projects website

The Fool's Day.

Ten years ago on April 1st 2003 I showed my film Dad's Dead to a cinema audience for the first time. It was in the Curzon Soho. I don't like looking backwards. Indeed I've got lots of new stuff brewing. Which I've been giving you titbits of. But it was one of those amazing moments that screening. I really didn't know what people would make of it when I screened it. It was a leap into the unknown. I'd been known back then for doing purely 2D comedy so when the audience came out of the cinema they were silent. 'How could a guy like me make something like that?" Later I screened it at the ICA and a guy pinned me against the wall almost punching me all angry demanding to know why I made it. People would confess things to me. How they were narrator or worst still how they were Jonno. 

Indeed people kept asking, are you Chris Shepherd? Do you have tattoos? You been to prison? I thought you'd have a skin head. When I said no to all of these they couldn't believe it. 

Thing I'm most proud of with Dad's Dead is its a pure expression. It was incredibly popular when it was released and I had everyone desperately wanting to make a big film with me. I spent five futile years developing a Dad's Dead inspired feature with a big swish film company. In the end it fizzled out in corporate indifference. It was my creative low spot. Im over it now but it taught me to keep the Dad's Dead spirit alive. Do something different. Do something that's from you. Say what you want. Be pure and if people don't like it you know what to tell them. Yeah? 

Here's another chance to see it. Featuring the brilliance of Ian Hart, Chris Freeney, Dave Kent,  and Maria Manton. 

People still ask me how I made it but I never really say. The magic for me is the story. I did a making of it which appeared on a onedotzero compilation but I just wandered along the route to my school surveying the carnage. Luckily there were no spray painted pigeons clogging up the place. Will dig out the film and post it up.