hendrix: fire

Footage of Hendrix performing at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival is combined with metamorphic animation hinting at pagan and elemental themes, transformative energy flow and the interconnectedness of living things. Images disintegrate and reform, and a visual correlation is drawn between particles of energy and the dynamics of sound.

Original format: D2

Year: 1992

Length: 2’40”

Commissioned by: Are You Experienced?

Director: Susan Young

Music: Jimi Hendrix

Executive Producer: Alan Douglas

Production Company: Mojo Working/Are You Experienced?

Dead Reckoning

A meditation on bad luck. Two animated manifestations of one character interact as he follows the maxim: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”. Represented in corporeal form by pixilated live action, our character journeys through Vienna. After falling on hard times, a drawn emanation of his mortality guides him to his final destination.

Original format: 4K

Year: 2016

Length: 2’ 45”

Commissioned by: Vienna Film Commission/Vienna Tourist Board

Directors: Susan Young, Paul Wenninger

Performance: Raul Maia

Music: Electro Guzzi

Production Company: Kabinett ad Co.

Distribution: Films de Force Majeure

beleza tropical: umbabarauma

This film, set to Ponta de Lanca Africano (Umbabarauma) by Jorge Ben, was created to accompany Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1, the first in a series of albums compiled by David Byrne to promote the unique music published by Brazilian artists during a repressive period of military rule in the 1970’s-1980’s. The aim was to visually invoke the album’s sensual and lyrical breadth and depth, and to subtly reflect the underlying social and political issues of that time.

Original format: 1” video (4:3)

Year: 1989

Length: 3’55”

Commissioned by: David Byrne

Director: Susan Young/Mike Smith

Music: Jorge Ben

Executive Producer: David Byrne

Production Company: Todo Mundo/Felix Films

beleza tropical documentary with david byrne

This half-hour documentary was screened on Channel 4 in 1989. Charlie Gillett is in conversation with David Byrne and Susan Young. Gillett explores Byrne's interest in the music composed during Brazil's repressive political regime spanning the 1960's -1980’s, and Byrne's aim to introduce a wider audience to this music by compiling a series of albums featuring musicians from that era. Byrne asked Young to direct the animated film Beleza Tropical (Umbabarauma) to accompany the first of these albums. Young describes her approach to the making of the film and reflects upon this subtle and fascinating genre of music. The soundtrack features various artists from the album Beleza Tropical, Brazil Classics 1.

Original format: D2 video (4:3)

Year: 1990

Length: 24’33”

Commissioned by: Initial TV

Hi-Life Director: Susan Young

Umbabarauma Director: Susan Young/Mike Smith

Director: Declan Lowney

Sound: Peter Greenslade

Music: various artists, Brazil Classics 1

Lighting Cameraman: Eugene O’Conner

Editor: Bruce Ashley

Producer: Rebecca Goldstone

Executive Producer: Malcolm Gerrie

Production Company: Initial TV

carnival

This film is a lyrical and kinetic evocation of the Notting Hill Carnival. Superfluous detail is pared away and a calligraphic ink line holds the dancing figures on the very edge of disintegration.

Original format: 16mm

Year: 1985

Length: 7’34”

Director: Susan Young

Music: Carl Washington

Producer: Susan Young

thin blue lines

This non-narrative observational film is partly drawn from life, illustrating personal experiences of the 1981 Liverpool 8 uprising, (the ‘Toxteth riots’), and their aftermath.

Original format: 16mm

Year: 1982

Length: 7’

Director: Susan Young

Music: David Fanshawe, African Sanctus/The Upsetters, No Peace

Producer: Susan Young

tempting fate

A cut-out film exploring feelings of shame, guilt, and impending doom.

Original format: 16mm

Year: 1984

Length: 6’43”

Director: Susan Young

Music: Carl Washington

Producer: Susan Young

tests in colour and space

Early animation featuring the relationship between model and life-drawing room, figures and a chair, the peyote pilgrimage of the Huichol Indians and the development of mark-making in children's drawing.

Original format: 16mm

Year: 1981

Length: 5’27”

Director: Susan Young

Music: PIL

Producer: Susan Young

the doomsday clock

Commissioned by the United Nations, The Doomsday Clock aims to convey the importance of multi-lateral nuclear disarmament, apolitically and without dialogue. The animation illustrates the consequences of nuclear escalation, including leaders locked in mutual mistrust, a nuclear winter, and the omnipresent skeletal spectre of war.

Original format: 16mm

Year: 1987

Length: 8’47”

Commissioned by: The United Nations

Director: Susan Young/Jonathan Hodgson

Music: Jonathan Hodgson

Editor: Nicola Gerry

Executive Producers: Elspeth MacDougall, Peter Hollander

Production Company: Unicorn Productions

march to the scaffold

This compilation of short clips illustrates a range of animation styles used in both personal and commissioned animation work.

Original format: Beta SP

Year: 1996

Duration: 2’34”

Director: Susan Young

Music: Berlioz, March to the Scaffold

1984: music for modern americans

In 1983 the artist Eduardo Paolozzi asked Susan Young to make a film based on drawings, tracings and photocopies Paolozzi had taken from his eclectic collection of magazines. Young asked fellow Royal College of Art student Emma Calder to help animate and Stuart Jones, Paolozzi's son-in-law, was commissioned to produce the soundtrack. Paolozzi didn't want a straightforward story and told Young and Calder to interpret his material freely, but they couldn't resist fashioning a surreal, slightly dystopian tale focussing on Paolozzi's themes about modern man. They thought he wouldn't notice their hidden story, but when Paolozzi came to view the final cut he spotted it, saying: "You crept a cheeky narrative in there"!

Original format: 16mm

Year: 1983

Length: 11’50”

Commissioned/Produced by: Eduardo Paolozzi

Director: Susan Young, Emma Calder

Cel painter: Isabelle Perrichon

Sound: Stuart Jones

Film financed by Dr John Tanner CBE

trafalgar square

Punks, pigeons and fantastical forms intermingle in this film, animated entirely on location in Trafalgar Square, in a rainy November in 1983.

buried treasures + wally badarou hi-life: excerpt

Short interview with Susan Young and a version of Young’s film Carnival, re-edited to accompany Wally Badarou’s track Hi-Life in 1986.

Year: 1990

Commissioned by: Island Visual Arts

universe in a brush: excerpt

Ralph Steadman, Susan Young and Mike Smith discuss animation (over a Jack Daniels, or three)

Year: 1990

Commissioned by: Channel 4