2:40 minutes
2025
Direct animation - painting 16mm film frame by frame - is an intentionally tedious, labor intensive, yet messy and haptic process.
The technique traces back to 1920s experimental film, but has a lesser-known history as a means for women to branch outside of textile work despite confining gender roles of the time. While rarely credited for their work, most pioneering experiments in direct animation were born out of women applying textile practices to analogue film material.
Marleigh’s use of direct animation is a conversation across time as she considers her relationship to matriarchal legacy on personal, historical, and deep time scales. Her scraping, painting, and splatting onto analogue film becomes an homage to female animators who have also been underrepresented in film history. The resulting abstract, cameraless film calls attention to the materiality of film as a means of representation.