Girl In The Hallway
2019 · 11m · USA
Directed by Valerie Barnhart
Genres: animation, documentary, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A hybrid stop-motion animated documentary examines why a disturbing childhood encounter continues to haunt an adult.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Hybrid stop-motion built from conté, charcoal, pastel on paper telling a true-crime childhood-trauma story — the form-content match is exact and Jamie DeWolf's testimony is a known emotional grenade. Vimeo Staff Pick Award for a reason. Strong.
Valerie Barnhart's stop-motion conté-and-charcoal handling of a traumatic neighborhood story won the Vimeo Staff Pick at Ottawa for very good reason — the medium's labor mirrors the witness it bears, in the lineage of Waltz with Bashir. Hard, exact, necessary.
155K views, 1,106 likes, 2019 Vimeo Staff Pick Award at Ottawa Animation Festival, narration by Jamie DeWolf, score by Alex Mandel — the conté/charcoal/pastel/graphite-on-paper stop motion is doing erasure-and-recovery as a literal animation principle. Stack of pedigree and a serious technique-content alignment.
Festivals
- Ottawa International Animation Festival 2019