Kimono

An exploration of Japanese culture by experimental animation artist José Castillo.

1992-01-01 | ja

Chair Cemetery

Confusion settles in the house, how to make it a home again?

2025-03-06 | fr

The Peel

After a flat tire leaves her stranded in the woods, a woman revisits haunting memories of her self-destructive tendencies on the finger nails. As she peels the skin from her fingers, each strip draws her deeper into the past. With every layer, she steps closer to the hidden child within herself.

2025-03-30 | xx

Phantasia

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

2024-03-13 | xx

Functional Block Diagrams

A synthesis of sound and movement; colourful characters dance and move in repetitive patterns to percussive and melodic elements. A combination of motion and music that is hypnotic and beautiful. At first it feels structured and orderly but as more elements are added becomes quixotically expressive.

| en

Dance

A closeted transgender woman is comforted by dancing to confront her sexual demons.

2024-07-28 | he

reMemBer2.human

In an indeterminate future, forbidden memories challenge a database containing all human memories. An experimental cinematic search between past and future, fiction and fact, Prishtina and Tirana. The future, a glitch.

2023-09-28 | sq

Optimizer Customizer

A feminine machine, stuffed with modern nano-technology and useless operations is depicted in this mixed-media 2D animation short, highlighting the consequences of consumerism and the downfall of civilized society. The machine reminiscent of a two-dimensional video game, leads to a destructive chain reaction after a strange malfunction, with people turning into clones and robots.

2002-01-01 | en

The Statue of Giordano Bruno

This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.

2005-01-01 | en

Fossil

An old man's vision of a drowning world is clouded. He decides to take radical actions inflicting damage to his surroundings. Instigating a self-destructive chain of events, coming from the dark abyss of his subconsciousness.

2021-09-22 | xx

El cerro de los elfos

Experimental animation film by José Castillo.

1982-01-01 | es

In my sleep, I swallow you

An exploration of intestines

2024-05-09 | xx

Seraphim on the Go!

a life size stop motion child puppet races through memories and daydreams reflecting on the cyclical nature of life.

2021-10-30 | en

Norsk Folksang

Emerging from the sea onto land an axolotl swims through complex terrain parallel to a man searching for an encounter with God.

2011-04-25 | en

Losing Touch

Searching for life in daily rituals, Losing Touch undertakes a shift in perception and presents the city as an ugly yet ecologically rich landscape. The film depicts the internal dialogue on coping with the grief and fear of ecological degradation, using the local streets of Berlin as a means to materialise and confront these emotions. As both the body and mind begin to wander, encounters with the landscape over a 24 hour period are transformed into an overstimulating and emotionally charged journey. Camcorder footage, film developed in beer and cyanotype create sensational and playful depictions of the surroundings, joining the rats scurrying on the ground and fleeing the night lights with the moths. Creatures of metal and flesh interact within and between the frames, coming together as an ugly yet vibrant community. Subverting the nature-culture dichotomy, a new image of nature is formed, not only as a romantic, distant place, but rather a dirty, omnipresent force.

| en

The Dog’s Drama

The dog's drama tells the story of a dog on the run through the Belgian countryside, attached to an endless leash.

2022-06-10 | fr

Fiz Amizade com um Fantasma

2024-04-23 | pt

A Short Vision

The leaders, the wise men, the leopard, the deer, the owl and the rat all look up in the sky in fear as a strange object flies through the sky.

1956-05-27 | en

it's raining wet puzzle pieces

Childhood memories continue to live inside me. Some of the most painful ones are the ones that echo the longest.

2025-06-07 | en

Chronopolis

In a gargantuan city lurking in the sky, powerful immortals who have become jaded with eternal life. Most of their time is spent monotonously constructing bizarre and unusual objects while waiting for the ultimate gift to arrive.

1983-09-21 | fr