Every Tuesday, Chris Robinson digests and dissects (relatively) new indie animation short films.
'La Traversee' by Elise Simard
Canadian animator, Elise Simard, has created a small body of intriguing, imaginative and deeply personal dreamscapes (My Little Underground, 2012, Breakfast, 2013). One of my favourites is La Traversée (2010). With dashes of Yuri Norstein and Andrei Tarkovsky, Simard’s gentle tale follows a child as she meanders alone through a forest taking in the mysterious yet inviting sights and sounds around her. Simard’s multi-layered designs and the reflective pace of her continually flowing camera nicely mirror the wonder and complexity of a child’s mind as it drifts between consciousness and imagination in that misty state between wake and sleep. The palpable sounds of animals and rustling leaves mingle with imaginings of elegant animals gracefully swaying through the woods. There is never a sense of threat or menace, just a big deep breath of existence.
La Traversée is a refreshingly meditative visual poem that revels in the wonder, thrill and hush of experience, of wandering and of just breathing and being.
“When I was little,” adds Simard, “I had a book about the hidden worlds you find when you take the long way home. The illustrations were dark, peculiar. I spent a lot of time trying to decipher the feelings they evoked. It was like nothing else we owned at home - it was as though the images existed for me, because of me. I believe this early experience echoes in my work, for communicating through hidden worlds has become a fundamental part of my practice as I seek to create for strangers I will never meet.”
A well-known figure in the world of independent animation, writer, author & curator Chris Robinson is the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
