OUROBOROS have been selected for the 21st Female Eye Film Festival (Female Eye Film Festival), which runs in Toronto from Wed., July 26th – Sunday, July 30th, 2023. My film will screen on Thursday, July 27th, 8.30PM (screening followed by an audience Q & A) at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, 506 Bloor Street West. Hope to see you there!
After careful consideration, I’ve decided to retool and restock my Etsy shop with different products. While I’ve greatly enjoyed creating my unusual and off-beat paper creations, it’s time for me to change things up. (Stay tuned for future ventures).
Therefore, I will be selling off remaining stock of the paper puppet kits and the paper dolls (both the regular and the magnetic dolls) until the stock is gone. VERY limited numbers on certain items, so once they’re gone, they are gone. 30% discount on listed items.
Visit Papercut Puppets on Etsy.
Delighted to announce that Ouroboros will have its North American premiere at the 30th incarnation of the Chicago Underground Film Festival this coming September. CUFF is a fantastic festival with a solid vision for all things odd and off-beat. Here’s the blurb from their web site that best describes their mandate: ““Underground” isn’t always easy to define. At its core, it’s a fluid, inclusive, forward-thinking concept that has fueled movements and counter-culture revolutions over time. Chicago Underground Film Festival is no different. At our core, we welcome visionaries, activists and creatives, and are proud to be the longest running incubator of the avant-garde, the controversial, the cutting edge, and the transformational.”
Delighted to have ‘Ouroboros’ included in the Distributors’ Screening from Vtape & CFMDC at the 69th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. The distributors’ screenings are out-of-competition screenings where “12 international distributors of artist and avant-garde films present selections from their current catalogues”. Screening will be Friday 28 April 2023; 19:45. Thank you to Vtape in Toronto for including my film in this program.
OUROBOROS is having its world premiere in Germany at the Internationale Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg (Regensburg International Short Film Week), March 16-26, 2023. My film opens the PARTYFILME program, so let’s drop that needle.
Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy & Healthy New Year!
I have a brand new paper puppet to share with you all:
This is Wilfred the Wizard, a magical marmalade cat. While other wizards may apply their art of alchemy towards transmuting base metals into gold, Wilfred prefers to focus his arcane knowledge towards conjuring catnip and other treats.
Final size of puppet once assembled: 9″ H x 6″ W
Available as a digital download, a DIY puppet kit, and as a pre-assembled puppet.
Available in my Online Shop or on Etsy.
Ouroboros spins a loose narrative of joy, grief, death and rebirth, all told through looping images printed on physical animation devices known as phonotropes. Much like the titular ouroboros, a symbolic snake that devours its own tail, everything in life is a loop.
After three years — two of which were significantly hindered by my concussion and subsequent recovery, in addition to a global pandemic and various lockdowns — my phonotrope project has finally reached its conclusion with the release of a 6-minute experimental animated short film featuring four different phonotropes and original music created by my frequent collaborator, Zev Farber. The film is currently being submitted to various film festivals worldwide, and will be released online thereafter.
Ouroboros captures my ongoing fascination with physical animation devices known as phonotropes — a contemporary update on the 19th-century pre-cinema device, the zoetrope — which uses a record turntable and a video camera to capture the magic of the animated loops. Created during the various pandemic lockdowns and shot entirely on my smartphone, this short film visualizes perpetual cycles of beginnings, endings, and the inevitable reset of the loop.
Happy Easter long weekend, my blog followers! Here’s a little video I shot a couple of years ago with one of my articulated paper puppets.
A video showcasing my limited edition artist’s multiple 7-inch playable vinyl phonotrope.
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake devouring its own tail and represents cycles of birth, death, and renewal. Much like the animated loop, the ouroboros is designed to perpetually start, end, and then restart again. While the endless repetition of a looped sequence is commonplace in the realm of animation, a deeper and more profound reading can be teased out of these loops when placed within the context of the ouroboros, which represents cycles of nature to which humanity is inextricably bound. These cycles can include waves of pandemics that recur throughout history and serve as stark reminders that “history repeats” as we collectively look back at the past for models of how pandemics tend to play out. Cycles of loss and renewal can take many forms: the loss of life, the loss of relationships, and the loss of livelihood have effected the lives of many people during this current pandemic. Even given all these various losses, the seed of hope lies buried within the ouroboros cycle itself by virtue of its very design. With every end, a new beginning must start for the cycle to reset and continue, and it is this promise of renewal that offers hope.
OUROBOROS:TEARS focuses on cycles of grief and mourning. The music on this disc was created by my collaborator Zev Farber. Interwoven within the repeating music loop of the soundtrack are audio fragments that recall electronic voice phenomena (EVP), sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices by parapsychologists (listen closely between 01:20 and 01:40).
This artist’s multiple is available for purchase in my Online Shop.
After long last, I have finished the construction and assembly of my “wedding cake” phonotrope, complete with all its various paper layers. In the rough, off-the-cuff smartphone video posted below, I give the phonotrope a quick whirl on my turntable.
The imagery on this phonotrope includes a twirling gold wedding ring, a hand holding this same ring, a snake that twists and turns into a variation on a figure-eight, and a weeping lover’s eye. Lover’s eye jewellery was popular in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when stylish aristocratic men and women often wore the miniature portraits depicting one eye (usually) of their spouse or lover. Typically painted on ivory, the tiny portraits were fashioned as brooches, rings, pendants, and lockets. The lover’s eye is surrounded by an ouroburos (a snake devouring its own tail, symbolic of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth), which ties back to the snake loop below (itself a looping infinity symbol) which appears on the first layer of this phonotrope.
I plan on building two more phonotropes, making the total number of phonotropes for my proposed installation four. Stay tuned.
Lady Lazarus 