ORGIASTIC HYPER PLASTIC

An elegy to a love affair that has gone sour, a fond farewell to that most beautiful material that has subjugated our planet – plastic.

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Year: 2020 / Duration: 7 min / Genre: Short film / Technique: Stop Frame
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A short animated film made from junk plastic, collected on beaches, roadsides and secondhand shops. A fond farewell to that most beautiful material in which our world has become entombed. An elegy to a love hate relationship of a hundred years. Costing almost nothing, malleable to any shape, soft or hard, transparent or opaque and available in every colour, it was the material of our childhood toys and also of the most technically advanced mechanisms created by mankind. But its strength and indestructibility is its most damaging characteristic as evidenced by its presence everywhere from the distant oceans to our own stomachs. In the film we will see the birth of plastics – tiny white components accumulate like protozoa until they fill the screen. We will see the march of the toys – limbless super-heroes, veterans of hundreds of kids’ games, simpering cartoon animals, spinoffs and merchandising from forgotten TV shows. Plastic from the oceans, sun faded and beaten by the waves will accumulate to form the map of the coastlines on which they were collected. Road kill plastic, flattened by countless vehicles, distorted, shattered, will change frame by frame into different shapes. Cosmetic and medical items, cutlery and lighters, supposedly disposable, dance in patterns that move from the abstract to the most literal and material form. In Bush’s pioneering animation technique, hundreds of similar objects are placed one after the other giving the illusion of movement. This technique using animated photographs or animating directly in front of the camera will be mixed with stop motion animation by an experienced puppet animator. The film will feature a soundtrack by composer Andy Cowton collaging samples of sound from the age of plastic.

Watch the making of

Director: Paul Bush
Produced by: Late Love Production and Ancient Mainer Productions
Producers: Lana Tankosa Nikolic and Paul Bush
Scriptwriter: Paul Bush
Animation: Paul Bush, Christophe Peladan, Philip Piaget, Shinobu Soejima
Addinional animation: Kristina Sletting Jensen
Editing: Paul Bush
Sound design: Andy Cowton
Music: Andy Cowton
Mix: Thomas Richard Christensen
Cinematography: Paul Bush, Christophe Peladan

SUPPORTED BY 
The West Danish Film Fund and Arts Council of England

AWARDS 
ODENSE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – OFF 2020 – Børge Ring Award for best animated film, HIROSHIMA INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2020 – Special Mention for best short film