Art musings and other great profundities

Topics relating to visual art, either mine or someone else’s.

Tentacled Darling of the Underground.

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Hello, gentle readers. This summer — though not quite over yet — has whizzed by at an alarming rate and those crisp mornings so characteristic of autumn are beginning to cool the air, causing us to reach for that added layer of clothing. As many of you may know, I was preoccupied this summer with producing, and then promoting, my latest short animated film Toronto Alice. With this task now complete, I thought I should mention the activities of that other child of mine, La Petite Mort, which has lately become the tentacled darling of the ‘underground’ film festival circuit.

Last night (August 26), La Petite Mort screened at the UnderGround Short Film Festival in Cork, Ireland. (Wish I could’ve been there, but the finances just didn’t allow for a trip to Ireland). Earlier in the summer, this film was also featured in the Montreal Underground Film Festival — which touts the delightful acronym of MUFF — where it was nominated for the 2015 Jury Prize/Nomination pour un prix du jury MUFF 2015. It was also featured in the Planet X program at the Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, a program that promised “some of the weirdest movies you will ever see” (a notion of which I most heartily approve) .
planetX

Beyond the underground film fest circuit, La Petite Mort has enjoyed some loving from the, ahem, ‘alternative’ porn film festivals like the PopPorn5 Film Festival in São Paulo, Brazil, and the granddaddy of them all, the Berlin Porn Film Festival. Both festivals categorized La Petite Mort under “fetish”, which is a fact I find endlessly funny. These festivals are not dedicated to (what I would characterize as) the mainstream “bleached blonde, breast implants and long, acrylic nails” brand of American-produced pornography, but rather the “pierced, tattooed and hairy armpits” type of alternative, frequently feminist or LGBT, produced porn — which is something I philosophically support. Below is a write-up on La Petite Mort from Lucie Blush, a filmmaker who produces pornography directed at women.

berlinporn

BluRay disc of “Toronto Alice”

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BR-TorontoAlice

A big stack of BluRay discs of Toronto Alice ready to ship out to my Indiegogo contributors. Made a few extra for those who didn’t manage to pick up this “perk” during my campaign, but would like to now. BR includes Toronto Alice, my two previous animated shorts “La Petite Mort” and “The Incident in the Nursery”, PLUS a one-hour interview conducted by Elizabeth Fearon and Steve Armstrong. Ships right to your door. WOWZA!

You can purchase the BluRays here.

Toronto Alice

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After much thought, I’ve decided to post the entire short film of Toronto Alice online for all to see. Even though I’ve submitted to a bunch of festivals, I decided that wider exposure online was worth the risk of disqualifying the film from a handful of festivals.

If you enjoy, then please share widely. Thanks.

Toronto Alice is DONE!

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TA screenshot 01

Toronto Alice is finally complete!

Many thanks to my crazy-super talented crew, Nicole, Matt and Karl, who really brought their A-game to this project. Their efforts really helped bring Toronto Alice to life! And thanks to the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council + my Indiegogo contributors, I was able to hire them :-)

You’d almost think that, after all the work involved and all those frames shot, we’d have a feature-length film on our hands. Nope. Just over 5 minutes of running time. That’s animation, folks — 24 spectacular frames per second.

An email with the Vimeo link + password has been sent to my Indiegogo contributors. They are getting the special deluxe world premiere.

Thanks again, everyone!

Jennifer Linton (Papercut Pictures)

Toronto Alice update, January 2015.

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torontoalice_jan2015

Baby, it’s cold outside. Good time of the year to hide out in one’s basement studio, making things move a little bit at a time. After a very busy Fall term at my teaching jobs, I’ve settled down a bit with a lighter course load for the Winter. This is very good news for my Toronto Alice animation project, which is now back in progress. Only 01:27 done thus far, but we’re getting there.

Lady Lazarus Blog: 2014 in review!

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It was a record year at Lady Lazarus: dying is an art. I received 63,000 views, which makes 2014 my busiest year ever. Also nice to see that, according to the stats counter, the blog post that received the most visits was the one dedicated to my last animated project, Domestikia, Chapter 3: La Petite Mort. Yay!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 63,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy Hallowe’en 2014!

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bride

Happy Hallowe’en, gentle readers! And now for something completely Gothic.

Annabel Lee
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.