Phil Mulloy, 4th February 2015Phil Mulloy, as photographed by Dana Dill Tasker. Phil Mulloy as filmed by Captain ZipI have wanted Phil to come and show work ever since he visited us at the Dog & Duck in June 2010 during a massive rainstorm and so I was delighted when he agreed to come again. I expected a fascinating evening of scatological mayhem and social comment: what we got was something even more profound. He started by telling us how he started as a live-action filmmaker and came to animation late, when he saw the success that Aardman was enjoying in the early 90s. Although he kicked off the screening with Intolerance (1999), Phil focussed mainly on his Christies films (2006-present) and told us that for all the Christies shorts and feature films he uses a set of 120 drawings which he made eight years ago – although he admitted he often makes this figure up. If you watch the video I shot of him introducing The Christies: Dead But Not Buried at LIAF 2011, you will hear him say it was 108 drawings: Of his working method and outlook, he said he wanted to work continually and not be beholden to anyone. He can make the Christies films at home for nothing – apart from his time – and this frees him from the need always to be raising finance in order to make a project. Their minimal animation gives the Christies a visual and emotional remoteness, requiring the viewer has to work harder; the very opposite, he explained, of the Pixar films in which all of the work is done for you. Their mask-like profiles and synthesised voices make for a greater suspension of disbelief and even empathy for the characters. On the one hand, we can all too easily believe that Mr Christie is a suburban Nazi; and on the other, sincerely pity him for having been kept as a sex slave in a cupboard in Tunbridge Wells. The Christies films Phil showed were: Introduction The House Painter Mister Yakamoto Mr. Christie’s Sex Manual The Sex Slave Of Tunbridge Wells (a London Animation Club exclusive) You can see all of these films at philmulloy.tv. I cannot give individual links as the embedded videos are invisible on Vimeo and not on YouTube. |
![]() Once again, you can see them at philmulloy.tv. He then closed the evening with one old film and one very new one. The old film was Sex Life Of A Chair (1997): scarcely-animated chairs perform a variety of sexual acts while the title of each is read out by an unseen German narrator, whose voice gets lower and lower with each successive word, to the point that it becomes inaudible. Once again, a conventional interpretation is impossible and somehow the film resonates far beyond its simple comic premise. The new film was Preparing To Fly (which is not available online), in which an instantly recognisable Phil Mulloy character appears four-fold on the white screen, swooping and swirling like four dancers in an evil Busby Berkeley routine. Gradually the figures recede into the distance until they appear to be little more than flies on the horizon: an appropriate scene with which to finish the evening. Many thanks to Phil for a fascinating and very thought-provoking talk. I hope to put a video of it online soon. Thanks also to Captain Zip for filming the event, to Dana Dill Tasker for taking photos (you can see them here) and to newcomer Jon Fitzsimmons who told us of his plan to develop his children’s book “The Prince, The Fairy And The Fouly” into an animated film. We return in a month with Edwin Rostron. See you then. |