CINEMATIC ERRANTRY

2 min, 16mm, 2024 (Select Stills)

By coloring, etching, and scratching shapes, lines, and symbols onto roughly 720 frames of found celluloid, this film attempts to create a cinematic language for an errant practice. Rooted in Édouard Glissant’s notion of errantry, the direct animations simultaneously rely on randomness and return. Seven different images return in the short film, but are reframed, revised, and recolored in random forms. The original image’s “authority” is called into question and thus destabilized as it is forced to interact with the interventions of my animations. The practice of etching was largely intuitive—I let my hands be guided by the shapes I already saw in the frame and tried to place the etchings in conversation or rebuttal with the existing image.

Editing and Production: Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson
Found Celluloid Footage: Harvard AFVS
Music: “Tentensholong” Mustapha Addy