How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels
1996 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Craig Welch
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In a black-and-white automated world, a man obsessed with control is tormented by vague longings he cannot name.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Black-and-white automated world, control-obsessed man tormented by unnameable longing — Švankmajer-Kafka territory done at NFB level. This is the weird shit I actually came for.
Welch's control-obsessed protagonist in a Švankmajer-Kafka mechanized world is exactly the NFB experimental-animation tradition at its most formally rigorous, and 998K views confirm the strange durability of its imagery. A serious 1996 work.
Craig Welch's 1996 NFB piece at 11:00 — black-and-white automated-world control allegory is exactly where formal mechanical choreography becomes the emotional argument. 998K views over 17 years confirms the unease holds.