Rob Munday
With six of the last ten Best Short Animation BAFTA’s going to films from the school, to say we have high expectations from the animated shorts coming out of the National Film and Television School would be somewhat of an understatement. Combine this confidence in the education establishment with the respect we have for thrice-featured animator Renee Zhan (Reneepoptosis, Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw), Pidge) and we knew O Black Hole! would be a film we adore.
Zhan has long been a filmmaker with a flair for unique storytelling, but with O Black Hole! she’s taken that narrative originality to a whole new level. The tale of a woman suddenly consumed by mortality and how she subsequently transforms into a black hole, this 16-minute short is unlike anything we’ve seen before. An epic musical that spans space/time and combines hand-drawn 2D animation with fluid stop-motion, as champions of great stories that brave new territory Zhan’s film ticks all the boxes we look for in our featured films here at S/W.
“The film became about a woman who is so worried about time passing that she sucks everything and everyone she loves inside herself” – Zhan discussing her premise.
Like the majority of Zhan’s films, O Black Hole! originated from an image the filmmaker had stuck in her head. “A few years ago I was drawing this woman with a dark charcoal smear where her face should be”, she explains. “I spent a long time interrogating this image and trying to figure out who she was and why this image stuck with me. Eventually, it seemed clear that her head was a black hole. So the film became about a woman who is so worried about time passing that she sucks everything and everyone she loves inside herself to keep them safe and forever”.
It’s a bizarre concept, there’s no denying it, but like with all Zhan’s work she takes these outlandish ideas – quests for god, the codependent relationship of a boy and a bird, suicidal pigeons – and not only makes them work but makes them flourish into myth-like tales with existential depth. With that in mind, it comes as no real surprise that Zhan’s filmmaking is inspired by creation stories and age-old legends.
“In my work, I’m often exploring my own insecurities, obsessions, fears”
“Mythology often includes big epic tales of heroism and adventure and quests but I think it’s all just part of this human need to make sense of the world around us”, she reveals. “I guess on a much smaller level that’s what I try to do through my films. In my work, I’m often exploring my own insecurities, obsessions, fears. With O Black Hole, I thought of it as a modern-day creation myth. I really wanted to make a film with some personal philosophical questioning combined with the fun narrative of a quest movie and a crazy operatic score”.
Zhan’s personality shines bright through her storyline, but it also radiates from the eclectic, impressive aesthetic of O Black Hole. Beginning in her trademark hand-drawn 2D style, the moment its stricken protagonist begins consuming all around her and she transforms into the titular black hole the short cleverly transitions into stop-motion, a move that is an unexpected, but welcome departure from the filmmaker’s usual approach.
“It was an opportunity to create a visually unique and interesting world” – Zhan discusses creating the universe of O Black Hole!
“I’ve always been a fan of mixed-media films and I really like using visceral textures and traditional mediums”, the director admits as we discuss the production of O Black Hole. “I thought that the story of the black hole really suited these contrasting mediums of 2D and 3D. The outside of the black hole, where time passes normally, is rendered in 2D; in pencil, charcoal, watercolors, and oil paint, because it’s ephemeral and fleeting. And the inside of the black hole, everything that the black hole has sucked inside herself and made everlasting, is 3D and solid”.
As I mentioned earlier, O Black Hole tackles some deep philosophical questions, exploring themes of existentialism and facing up to one’s own mortality. As the final lines of the film state: “O black hole, please don’t lament, we’re just dreams that the universe dreamt” and its central character concludes her journey in a place of contentment, it feels like Zhan is telling us (or maybe herself?) that all will be ok, there’s beauty to be found in change. A sentiment we need more than ever right now.
Having played at pretty much every festival under the sun over the last two years, picking up trophies at Aspen and SXSW and winning the Best Post-Graduate Film prize at The British Animation Awards, O Black Hole is released online today as Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. With another short, the brilliant Soft Animals, currently touring festivals, Zhan is now working on new short Shé (Snake), which she describes as a “live-action/animation hybrid horror short film about a British-Chinese girl in a high-pressure youth orchestra”.