Imprints
2004 · 6m · Canada
Directed by Jacques Drouin
Genres: animation, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, sensual, surreal
Animator Jacques Drouin explores both sides of the Alexeieff-Parker pinscreen, pivoting and lighting it to reveal hidden relief images while wrestling with his favourite instrument to Couperin's rondo.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Drouin turns a niche animation tool into pure sculptural theater—flipping the pinscreen to hunt for the images already trapped inside it is genuinely perverse, and the fact that it's wedded to 18th-century harpsichord music makes the whole thing feel like a prank on taste itself.
This is essential cinema—a master animator in conversation with his own medium's history, using the Alexeieff-Parker pinscreen as both subject and instrument while Couperin's rondo provides the formal skeleton; it's the kind of essay film that belongs in any serious retrospective of animation and visual philosophy.
The singular choice here is the pivot itself: by simply rotating and relighting the pinscreen, Drouin unearths a completely different visual language from the same physical object, proving that sometimes the most elegant technical decision is the one that rewires what you already have.