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Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head

"This compilation is a selection of six short films and videos, made in London over the period 1994 to 1999. These pieces develop my own fusion of experimental writing/monologues with underground film forms, playing with fractured forms of storytelling and film trick conceits. The compilation encompasses the period before I started editing digitally, using Super-8 animated film and monologue, as on Heady and Gorgeous Operation. My first videos experimented with frame-by-frame digital ‘hand crafted’ animation, using ‘fairy tale’ like narrative devices - Important Toy, "What are you doing with your fingers?" and a combination of both (with an imploding narrative) in 4 Ways he tried to tell you. In The Spectacular Murder of Mervyn, the challenge was to take an impossible-to-film, bizarre ‘given’ literary text, and make it into a film using Super-8 alone."

-Jennet Thomas

# Title Artists Run Time Year Country
1 Important Toy Jennet Thomas 00:08:20 1997 United Kingdom
2 The Spectacular Murder of Mervyn Jennet Thomas 00:06:00 1999 United Kingdom
3 4 Ways He Tried to Tell You Jennet Thomas 00:07:00 1999 United Kingdom
4 Gorgeous Operation Jennet Thomas 00:08:00 1996 United Kingdom
5 "What are you doing with your fingers?" Jennet Thomas 00:06:00 1996 United Kingdom
6 Heady Jennet Thomas 00:08:00 1994 United Kingdom

Important Toy

Jennet Thomas
1997 | 00:08:20 | United Kingdom | English | Color | Stereo | |

DESCRIPTION

A young girl buys a weird toy from a charity shop. She forms such an intense relationship with it that it develops special ways of communicating and a strange connection to her that seems to defy the laws of physics. As the situation escalates, it seems that repression is the only way forward. First conceived of as a kind of fairy tale that goes wrong, this is a piece about learning the “rules” of grown-up reality and an extrapolation of the consequences of “over-identifying” with toys. A digital video with digital video effects, live-action, and model/object animation.

This title is also available on Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head.

The Spectacular Murder of Mervyn

Jennet Thomas
1999 | 00:06:00 | United Kingdom | English | Color | Stereo | 4:3 |

DESCRIPTION

An adaptation of the gruesome and fantastical ending chapter of the notorious experimental anti-novel Maldoror, first published in 1868 and written by a young man (who died soon after writing it) who called himself Comte De Lautréamont. A joyful return to the necessity of Super-8 film tricks, this is part of a larger Anglo-German collaborative feature film Maldoror, shot entirely on Super-8 in sections by 15 underground filmmakers working independently. Includes Super 8 Film, model animation, photo animation and live action.

"One of the strangest films to come out of Britain in years."

--The Guardian, U.K.

This title is also available on Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head.

4 Ways He Tried to Tell You

Jennet Thomas
1999 | 00:07:00 | United Kingdom | English | Color | Stereo | |

DESCRIPTION

A fragmented puzzle of a sinister narrative turned inside out and comprised of digital video, digital video animation, and Super-8, with model animation and human pixelation.

“This is a video about the thing that won’t go away. It has been trying to contact me by altering bits of my reality for several years now, and this seven minutes is a clear demonstration of that. My 8-year old nephew got drawn into the whole thing, and that’s why his voice is on this video. I’m not sure if it’s dead now. We’ll just have to see.”

—Jennet Thomas 

This title is also available on Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head.

Gorgeous Operation

Jennet Thomas
1996 | 00:08:00 | United Kingdom | English | Color | Stereo | |

DESCRIPTION

A meditation on the nature of “Nature” and the uncertainty of “Cause and Effect.”

“Originally (like most of my earlier film work) this was a performance piece: text performed alongside the projected image. A complex and absurd ‘story’ about a man who thought there was something wrong with his eye. He goes to the doctor, who can’t help him much, but he finds a way he can operate on himself with uplifting yet troubling results.”

—Jennet Thomas

Super-8 and 8mm, film mattes, painting directly onto film, and model/object animation.

This title is only available on Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head.

"What are you doing with your fingers?"

Jennet Thomas
1996 | 00:06:00 | United Kingdom | English | Color | Stereo | 4:3 | DV video

DESCRIPTION

"A piece about self-consciousness and the fearful noise of wind in the trees. Featuring myself as a woman who is lured into the garden by the cries of foliage, given a dinner she doesn't want by a mysterious organic being, and then turned into something else or maybe not.  My first foray into digital editing and special hand crafted frame-by-frame effects."

--Jennet Thomas

Digital video, live action, digital video effects, human pixelation and model animation. 

This title is also available on Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head.

Heady

Jennet Thomas
1994 | 00:08:00 | United Kingdom | English | Color | Stereo | |

DESCRIPTION

"Starring an inflatable wig holder that I got at a car boot sale in Bremen, Germany, this film began as a demonstration of different film animation techniques, but evolved into a bizarre improvised narrative in which the head escapes from the violent clutches of a mixed-up model girl, is sent to Poland in a wicker basket, where it has a nice holiday (I took it on holiday to Poland with me and animated it in the countryside), and finally returns on the ferry."

-- Jennet Thomas

Super 8 film, cut-out animation, model and object animation.

This title is only available on Jennet Thomas: 6 pieces from my head.