Obliterating the Ordinary
“Animator” Doesn’t Quite Cut It for Salise Hughes
By Alicia Dara
In her arresting short films, Seattle-based filmmaker and animator Salise Hughes explores intimate motifs in an abstract setting. “I am interested in the implications of recycled film footage,” she says. “Of tearing apart a film and rebuilding it by subverting the original material and giving it a new meaning.”
In her recent film Double Lives, which screened at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival, Hughes uses footage of a film noir and a western starring Donna Reed to explore themes of longing and desire. During the course of the film, the characters become aware of and are drawn to each other, but never meet.
With no formal animation training, Hughes began making films just three years ago and has already achieved international recognition, with prestigious screenings around the world in places like Rotterdam International Film Festival, Barcelona Independent Film Festival, Avanto Film Festival Helsinki, Invideo Festival Milan, and Bumbershoot here in Seattle. In 2006 she also won the award for “most technically innovative film” at the Ann Arbor Festival in Michigan.
Much of her work takes the same approach of starting with old footage and creating a new canvas upon which to play. “I’m not sure if animation is the right term for what I do,” she says of the most common category in which her films are placed. “My biggest challenge is that I seem to be creating my own genre of filmmaking.”
Her process involves erasing areas of digital footage in Photoshop, frame by frame, and then sometimes replacing those areas with other footage. She recounts how Matt McCormick, a Portland filmmaker and founder of the PDX Film Festival, called her work “re-animation”-the process of taking apart a film and then reconstructing it.
“The type of manipulation I do is usually done directly on film, but I feel working digitally in Photoshop allows for more control and increases the possibilities because of the larger surface area,” she says. “The down side is the time it takes to work with every frame of film. It takes about three months to finish a four-minute film. I’ve learned some tricks along the way though, by looping segments when ever possible.”
In another film, Tidal Wave (2006), an unseen narrator recounts a recurring dream of being chased by a tidal wave that engulfs his surroundings and obliterates everything in the landscape. The background footage is black and white. A male figure, his face obscured by blue waves, walks slowly through a busy city street while people around him take on the same blue water effect that shimmers and glows as they go by. The contrast of two worlds, the street and the sea, is highlighted by a soundtrack consisting only of beach sounds like waves, sea birds, and the breeze.
Hughes’ inspiration comes from her background in visual art. “A main theme of my paintings is the breaking down of materials,” she says.
But she adds that seeing Bill Morrison’s 2002 avante-garde visual symphony Decasia: The State of Decay jumpstarted her film career. “Morrison used a large quantity of decomposing reels of nitrate film from various sources and re-filmed them, as is, without any further manipulation as a feature length film. The result was a fascinating document of decay where the occasional image and storyline would appear out of the wreckage, and then retreat. I saw Decasia at the Little Theater [in Seattle] a few years ago, and was inspired to do my own experiments with found footage.”
Hughes gained access to the necessary tools of filmmaking through the Northwest Film Forum, where she started volunteering three years ago. “Until then I had no previous experience with filmmaking,” she says. “In exchange for volunteering office work I was able to take a class on editing and have use of their editing room facilities. [911 Media Arts Center offers similar resources. -Ed.] I also have use of their 16mm film library for source material. The whole staff has been very supportive of my efforts.”
Already a veteran of several international festivals, Hughes is looking forward to a new year of traveling with her remarkable work. “My current plan is to finish a program of films and to tour with it across the country and overseas,” she says.
Salise Hughes' Tidal Wave