Rob Munday

Originating around 90-years ago in the 1930’s, Pinscreen animation is still a rare sight (mainly due to the fact there are only two working Pinscreens left in the world). Created using a board with hundreds of thousands of retractable pins, which create shadows depending on how far they are pushed through their holes, with today’s digital tools at hand it’s no huge surprise animators have moved away from such laborious techniques. Like most time-consuming crafts though, the product from such a meticulous process is nothing short of staggering. At S/W we have a belief that the story behind a film is never more important than the one captured onscreen, but once you know a short has been created using the Pinscreen technique you certainly start to see it in a different light.

Born from a desire to make a film using Pinscreen, Justine Vuylsteker’s Étreintes (Embraced) is a five-minute animation focused on a woman who finds herself at the tip of a love triangle, torn between her past and her present. A sensual watch, as the story unfolds over its short duration, we witness its confused protagonist lose herself to her thoughts and memories. As clouds become bodies entwined and the faces of her two loves drift in and out, we begin to get a real understanding of the internal battle she is fighting and are eager to see which side is victorious.

Embraced’s central character is caught between the memories of a past love and the realities of her present relationship.

With the themes of the film originating from one, long, sketchbook drawing Vuylsteker created during a residency at Fontevraud, it’s easy to see how that initial sketch led her to create the story of Embraced. The real challenge was obviously bringing it to the screen through this extraordinary technique. With the writing process happening over a year, the filmmaker then just had six and a half months for production, which again took place at a residency, this time at CICLIC in central France.

With this timeframe largely dictated by the fact that after this period the Pinscreen would depart for elsewhere, Vuylsteker knew the creation period would need to be fluid as she got to grips with the technique and decided what worked and what didn’t. Explaining that she was “dead set against channelling the film into a set structure, with a storyboard or an animatic”, in this interview with Ben Mitchell for Skwigly, the director needed to transform her way vision of the film during the production, with some unexpected surprises along the way.

Embraced sounds like it may have been a challenge to make, but the resulting film is a true work of art. A delicate tale of the power of the mind and the ongoing battle with trying to live in the present, the tactile nature of the craft feels the perfect visual representation of this story. But, beyond that, Vuylsteker’s unique short is also a tribute to the Pinscreen technique and its creators, husband-and-wife team Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, as the filmmaker explains (once again in that interview with Ben Mitchell):

With Embraced Vuylsteker’s first time working with the Pinscreen, she has since designed and animated a series of backgrounds using the technique for the French feature Les voisins de mes voisins sont mes voisins.