The Ballad of Holland Island House
2015 · 4m · USA
Directed by Lynn Tomlinson
Genres: animation, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, mythic
Told from the perspective of the last house on a sinking Chesapeake Bay island, a clay-painted animation mourns a disappearing world.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Oil-on-glass clay-painted ballad sung by a drowning house — sea-level rise told from the perspective of the doomed real estate. That image alone earns the watch.
Tomlinson's oil-on-glass clay-painting technique is the rare material innovation that earns its lineage to Caroline Leaf, and IndieWire's praise for the Animation Show of Shows context is not idle. The house-as-narrator is a genuine formal gesture.
Indiewire-blurbed and bundled into Animation Show of Shows, with the OG description spelling out the oil-based clay-on-glass frame-by-frame technique that drives the whole piece. 4:19 is the perfect runtime for a tactile elegy where every frame is literally a smear of decay.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animation Festival 2015