*Jury Prize: Paris Int’l Animation FilmFest, Paris, FR -- 2022 *Special Guest Selection: CINANIMA, Espinho, PT -- 2022 *Retrospective screening for prospective students: Stoptrik Festival, Maribor, SL -- 2022 *Official Selection: Film Maudit, Santa Monica, USA -- 2022
HERE I’M, the visual counterpart to Wishbone Zoe’s 2020 album “French Of The Bird”, is both a nonlinear study of disorder-caliber anxiety and a diagonally-slashing debut of multi-media animation.
HERE I’M is an augmented version of a live mixed-media performance piece which, pre-quarantine, Wishbone had initially planned to tour on in support of her new album.
The chimerical and hyper-saturated four-movement suite moves at a breakneck pace, clocking in just under nine minutes. It parallels the first section of the album in which an autobiographical and ambiguous narrator attempts to navigate the frenetic psychic landscapes that shift at a moment’s notice. Wishbone’s coyote people appear in both substantial and the ethereal hypothetical forms of churning anxious thinking; they loop scenarios, cartoonishly manifest symptoms and their actions are shadowed by episodes of scorching pink reptilian chaos.
HERE I’M utilizes hand-drawn animation and performance poetry elements in the same collage techniques and pacing of the film’s album soundtrack, in which loops and textures clash and mix unexpectedly at a reckless pace. Wishbone’s background as a musician influences the sharp timing and rhythmic qualities of her visual work, and her preoccupation with anarchic cartoonishness adds necessary levity to a dense but engaging visual experience.