A FUGUE
In a melancholic half-alive dreamscape, a nameless and featureless sedentary body forgotten from time and space struggles to find the light to its path amongst an ever-expanding disorderly reverie.
"There's an intense maturity within an old soul to this film, a dark beauty that opens the door into an uncomfortable unknown, leading you to a purity of light in the end. No shortage in how one can interpret that."
- PHYFF Judges' Comments
"Charles creates an intensely immersive atmosphere through camera movement, soundscape, and editing. He gets so much out of so little by using the form to its absolute breaking point. I feel like with more to work with, and perhaps in another medium, he has the potential to make something truly incredible."
- Filmmaker Cecil Selwyn, February, 22nd 2020
-
Charlie JimenezDirector
-
Charlie JimenezWriter
-
Charlie JimenezAnimator
-
Charlie JimenezCinematography
-
Charlie JimenezKey Cast"Dancer"
-
Charlie JimenezSound
-
Project Type:Animation, Experimental, Short, Student
-
Genres:Surreal, Expressionistic, Impressionistic, Moodpiece, Tonepoem, Mystery, Atmospheric, Ambience, Ambient, Multigenre, Expressionist, Abstract, Figurative
-
Runtime:11 minutes
-
Completion Date:July 27, 2019
-
Production Budget:0 USD
-
Country of Origin:United Kingdom
-
Country of Filming:United Kingdom
-
Language:No Dialogue
-
Shooting Format:Digital
-
Aspect Ratio:16:9
-
Film Color:Black & White
-
First-time Filmmaker:Yes
-
Student Project:Yes - Weymouth College
-
Philadelphia Youth Film FestivalPhiladelphia
United States
February 22, 2020
United States Premiere
Winner - First Place - Experimental -
ENIMATION FestivalMaribor
Slovenia
November 26, 2019
Solvenia Premiere
Official Selection -
Farnham Film FestivalFarnham
United Kingdom
November 14, 2019
Official Selection -
Experimental Film FestivalTulsa
United States
June 16, 2020
Official Selection -
Dhaka International Youth Film Festival 2020Paltan, Dhaka
Bangladesh
July 29, 2020
Online
Official Selection
Charles Jimenez (They/Them) is a neurodivergent filmmaker, artist, and performer whose work revolves around the invisible worlds of memory, dreamscapes and spiritual experiences through pictorial, surrealist, and metaphysical contexts.
Charles is in their second year of study at Central Saint Martins (UAL), studying BA "Performance: Design & Practice" - Charles is currently working on a surrealist pixilation animation with the working title 'The Waiting Kitchen'.
Charles' has previously had work experience as an animator for Simon Oatley at BFI Film and Video, and has creatively directed and performed in several performance art pieces collaborating with Salvia and Dextra Mandrake; which have been featured at Riposte and Wraith, each respectively held at Electrowerkz, London.
When making "A FUGUE" I became inspired by the mental spaces of prolonged inertia which would accompany me in my creative blocks, being neurodiverse I often experience spontaneous dips in mental productivity, I would almost completely zone out into this bewildering universe of a dead time. This dead time was a place I projected around my inability to calculate or exist in any sense of time. It felt existentially threatening, yet alluring and strangely meditative.
And proved to be the therapeutic state to mentally prepare me for the lockdown.
This sense of threat and meditation attracted me, as well as the sense of time that occupied these experiences, the dreamscape of A FUGUE was made with this simultaneous purgatory sense of threat and calmness that came about from these inertia experiences.
In a time now where each of our actions become increasingly difficult and silent under by government guideline, this inertia is both our peace and our silence, it is both our space for growing our spirits, while also the blanket which prevents us from speaking. I wanted to share my experiences of this space, and both its darkness and lightness, in the hopes that once we awake from this zone, we may emerge out stronger than before.