Jim Trainor
- 1998The Bats
- 1997The Fetishist
- 2000The Moschops
He draws in black marker on office paper, lets the lines quiver, and narrates animal lives like a nature film gone strange.
Trainor has made animated films since he was thirteen. He grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, moved to New York in 1979 to study at Columbia University, and lived there through his twenties and thirties. Since 2000 he has taught animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He draws his films by hand, mostly in black marker on typing paper, and shoots them on 16mm, with no cels or layers. He keeps the drawings rough, so they quiver on screen. Flat, documentary-style narration borrows from nature films and older ethnographic films, and his subjects are guilt, transgression and the blurry line between animal instinct and human behaviour.
The Fetishist (1997) is about the 1940s Chicago serial killer William Heirens. A run of animal films followed, among them The Bats, The Moschops and The Magic Kingdom. The Bats received an honourable mention for short filmmaking at Sundance in 2000. Trainor showed in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in 2010.
Films
Where to start with Jim Trainor, in the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Still from The Fetishist to come. The Fetishist
An animated portrait of the Chicago serial killer William Heirens, whose crimes began with stolen underwear, told through vignettes, dreams and fantasies.
Still from The Bats to come. The Bats
A mock nature documentary. A bat born in a cave near a Mayan temple learns to echolocate and lives through sexual and metaphysical discoveries to the end of his life.
Still from The Moschops to come. The Moschops
Set about 250 million years ago and narrated by mammal-like reptiles, with a melancholy theory of where romantic longing comes from.
Still from The Magic Kingdom to come. The Magic Kingdom
Zoo footage of lemurs, monkeys and apes, cut with animated dots and diagrams.