A very rare retrospective of the animated works of Suzan Pitt, as well as the UK premiere of ‘Persistence of Vision’ – a short film documenting her career. Suzan Pitt will be joining LIAF at The Horse Hospital to present her wonderfully strange animations and take part in a Q&A.
‘Asparagus’ (Suzan Pitt, 1979)
This candy-coloured nightmare stunned audiences upon its release and catapulted Suzan Pitt to the front ranks of independent animation. Stunning cel animation propels its blank-faced protagonist into the world of the phallus, rendered here as a field of asparagus, which she deep throats, excretes and flushes away. A moving meditation on art and the cost of reproduction, ‘Asparagus‘ remains, 32 years after its release, a benchmark of single frame intensity.
20’00, USA
‘Joy Street’ (Suzan Pitt, 1995)
An ambitious, astonishing story of a woman’s journey from suicidal despair to personal renewal, with the help of an unlikely spirit guide.
“Haunting animated paintings capture the isolation and distraught psyche of a suicidal woman….the film is beautiful one moment and disturbing the next” (John Cooper, Sundance Film Festival)
24’00, USA
‘El Doctor’ (Suzan Pitt, 2005)
A dark animated poem set in a crumbling Mexican hospital in the 1920’s. Inhabited by surreal characters, including the man shot with one hundred holes, the girl who sprouts morning-glories and the woman who thinks she is a horse, the Doctor prefers to drink.
“It’s safe to say the legendarily absurdist Luis Buñuel might have sparked to the sordid, gruesome charms of renowned animator Suzan Pitt’s five-years-in-the-making short ‘El Doctor’. A trippy, magic-realist expedition through the mind of a pickled old Mexican doctor on his regret-filled last day on Earth, El Doctor makes rich use of Pitt’s hand-drawn movement technique. Overall the effect is playfully grim and somehow wondrous, an ode to the living, breathing fantastic in Mexican folk art.” (Robert Abele, LA Times)
24’00, USA
‘Visitation’ (Suzan Pitt, 2011)
Inspired by hearing wolves crying and simultaneously reading H.P. Lovecraft, Visitation unwinds through a dark landscape of unending life and death. Steeped in an alchemical dream life, a black-and-white landscape of gothic figures enact evolving metaphysical dramas.
9’00, USA
‘Persistence of Vision’ (Blue & Laura Kraning, 2006)
A documentary exploring the inspirations, journeys and creative expression from which her films have evolved throughout the career of Suzan Pitt.
28’00, USA
