Deadsy

Deadsy, directed by David Anderson, written and narrated by Russell Hoban, 1989, is one of the films that typify the creativity coming out of the UK in the 1980s, back when Channel 4 showed challenging and innovative films. Integrating animation with rotoscoped footage and manipulated video, it typifies what Alan Cholodenko describes as the way that animation complicates our view of what is real as opposed to what is imaginary:

‘… in a certain sense animation may be thought to be that which indetermines and sus­pends the distinction between representation and simulation, what makes it impossible to say which is which, as it indetermines and suspends all things.’[1]


[1] Alan Cholodenko, The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (Sydney: Power Publications, 1991) , 21–2.