Paul Bush: Working Directly

A journey into the centre of Hell; Dante's The Divine Comedy, illustrated by Gustav Dore's wood engravings and animated by scratching directly into the surface of the film. 

The poet Dante is taken by Virgil through the gates of the city of desolation and into the centre of Hell. What he sees is not simply an apocalyptic vision of the punishment that awaits sinners after death, but also the very real horrors committed by human hands on earth. The film is based on Gustav Dore's nineteenth century woodblock engravings illustrating Dante's The Divine Comedy, and the images are produced by engraving directly into the surface of colour filmstock.

"An unusually somber animated short about Dante's descent into hell, where he suffers nightmarish visions of punishment and apocalyptic folly. Inspired by Dore's engravings, the animation, which often borders on the abstract, is eloquent, elegant and technically superb."

--Geoff Andrews

"As the poet Dante is conducted by Virgil through the city of desolation into Hell, so Paul Bush intersperses these safe, well-known engravings with shots of unexpected, horrific flashes of Man's inhumanity to God: a do-it-ourselves catalogue of pestilence. Only in the final vision of stars seen as part of a human eye are we allowed the respite of salvation. His Comedy is a brief stab in the dark to illuminate a wholly original talent."

--Tom Hutchinson

This title is only available on Paul Bush: Working Directly.

A radical reworking of an etching by Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, brought to life by engraving fame by frame into the photographic emulsion of color filmstock. The viewer is taken on a journey through the etching, accompanied by the sounds that the artist might have heard from his window as he worked.

"I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world never really exists as we see it and understand it. Matter exists of course, but has no intrinsic meaning, such as those we attach to it. Only we know that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree."

--Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964

"The viewer is witness to an image, a work of art, coming into being and taking shape... Bush is able to hold, develop and satisfy the viewer's curiosity in part by setting up a puzzle--what do these lines represent? That becomes a narrative through the compelling interplay of image and sound... What we have here is an image of the labour of art. If Bush's work is a homage-in-film to an artist who worked in a different medium, it is one that seeks to explore and indicate the equivalences between the two through a concentration on the specific formal technique employed by himself and Morandi."

--Chris Darke

This title is only available on Paul Bush: Working Directly.

A ship sets sail on an epic voyage through malignant natural and supernatural elements from which one man alone survives. An adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by19th Century wood engravings which are animated by scratching directly into the surface of color filmstock. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its message of ecological redemption has a curiously contemporary resonance, but it is at the level of the mythic that the poem has lasting relevance; for this epic tale of extraordinary events simply mirrors the struggle that each human being faces on their own in his or her life.

"This work is extremely realistic in its reproduction of human forms, churning waves and rocking vessels on the sea, which clearly have been created with the use of live-action reference footage... In terms of The Albatross's imagery, the intersection of documentary and fiction is quite strong, with the underlying live-action footage evoking a sense of the real, while the etched images are themselves quite stylized." 

--Maureen Furniss

"A beautifully animated, suitably poetic adaptation of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, reminiscent (but mercifully not too much so) of Dore's engravings. Forever teetering on the brink of abstraction, the visuals are at once immaculately realistic and appropriately mythic." 

--Geoff Andrew

This title is only available on Paul Bush: Working Directly.

To the background of village celebrations a father questions his daughter about a suspected lover. She cleverly deflects him with her answers but the passions rise, the villagers take sides and what began as harmless banter becomes bitter and angry. Inarticulate with rage the father mounts his horse and the male villagers set out to begin a cycle of violence seemingly without end. In this traditional Nordic song a pattern of developing and irrevocable anger emerges which we are familiar with both in domestic violence and international conflict. Set to the song Father and Daughter by Percy Grainger.

This title is only available on Paul Bush: Working Directly.