The future grows on you

Funny what a fella with a fiddle and a handful of film can do. Future noir electronica guru Zan Lyons set the Centre of Contemporary Art in the Natural World buzzing when he accompanied a combination of manga film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and his own films with his eerily dark dub in Futureshock.
‘It isn’t narrative,’ he warned at the start of the show. He needn’t have worried – there was a story in there, and his own films took centre stage with some unexpectedly beautiful sections, his rhythmic sound becoming quite mesmerising. And even though some parts felt a bit long, the overall effect left you wanting more – more of the manga and more of Zan.

The event was part of the incredibly diverse Animated Exeter, and films from the back catalogue of animate!, which produces six new, challenging animation features a year (check out the site, the next call for submissions is soon), started proceedings. From surreal tales of regeneration to a night on the town etch-a-stetch style, these films demonstrated a growing desire to push boundaries or, in the case of Biogenesis, just growing.

Posted by Cptn