Menagerie
2022 · 4m · United States
Directed by Jack Gray
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, surreal
Hundreds of looping animated characters spiral through the repetitive motions of contemporary city life.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's going to call this meditative and profound, but Gray's basically made a screensaver that costs nothing to ignore—which is exactly why it works as a mirror held up to how we actually move through cities, numb and interchangeable.
The layering of repetitive cycles invokes Brakhage's structural interrogations while maintaining a distinctly contemporary digital vocabulary; Gray's formal discipline transforms what could be mere visual noise into a rigorously composed meditation on urban synchronization.
The decision to populate the frame with hundreds of identical looping figures—rather than follow any single character—reframes the entire grammar of animated narrative, making constraint itself the most elegant gesture.
Festivals
- Hiroshima Animation Season 2024, Official Selection