Private Project

9 Drawings

Reconstructing drawings made before, during, and after surgery to remove a brain tumour that had been growing since early childhood, ‘9 Drawings’ probes the activity of drawing itself; its relationship to experience, temporality, trauma, illusionism and control. Enacting the unspoken negotiations between a brain and body, between the boundless potential of a blank page and the claustrophobic interrogation of the MRI scanner, the drawings reveal themselves - specimens, confessions, resurrections.

  • Penelope Andrea
    Director
  • Clod Ensemble
    Producer
  • Kit Ashton
    Sound
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    24 minutes 45 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 9, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Penelope Andrea

Studied at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and De Ateliers, Amsterdam.

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Director Statement

This video is part of my ongoing recovery from traumatic brain injury and my research into its relationship to drawing. Re-animated out of a lifelong archive of drawings, each frame-by-frame animation registers internal changes and reflects its own state of brain health.
Through these changes I glimpsed an unmasking - a blip in the cohesive illusion of reality the brain works hard to maintain. Utilising video as the medium to reflect the brain’s propensity for creating and consuming linear time and narrative, I hope to immerse the viewer in this.
Thus ‘9 Drawings’ is a personal attempt to process what has happened - to communicate and explore the disorientation and feeling of loss - and to share a profound sense of solace, connection and wonder, even, in the immediate, primal act of drawing.