Jodie Mack
- 2018The Grand Bizarre
- 2013Dusty Stacks of Mom
- 2008Yard Work Is Hard Work
- 2021Wasteland No. 3
A London-born animator who makes 16mm films, one frame at a time, out of fabric, posters and junk mail, often set to songs she writes herself.
Mack was born in England in 1983 and lived there until she was eight, when her family moved to the Tampa and St. Petersburg area of Florida. She studied film and media at the University of Florida, then took an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. She has taught at Dartmouth College since 2010 and is now a professor there.
She shoots on 16mm, mostly with a Bolex, and animates things people throw out or look past: fabric, posters, wallpaper sample books, the insides of security envelopes. She places her work in the tradition of visual music, and calls Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norman McLaren her "animated forefathers". Her longer films are musicals, with songs she writes and sings.
Dusty Stacks of Mom grew out of the failure of her parents' poster and postcard business in Florida. Her first feature, The Grand Bizarre, followed textiles through fifteen countries over five years. It premiered at Locarno in 2018 and went on to Toronto and the New York Film Festival.
Films
Where to start with Jodie Mack, in the order they were made. Runtimes are approximate.
Yard Work Is Hard Work
A musical about looking for love in an economic crisis, acted out by figures cut from magazines and adverts. Mack wrote and performs the songs.
Still from Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project to come. Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project
Mack animates the leftover stock of her mother's poster and postcard business, set to a remake of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with new lyrics that tell the story. She has sung parts of it live at screenings.
New Fancy Foils
Pages from paper sample books, thrown out when the businesses that used them closed, flicker past and then hold still, one pattern tested against the next.
Still from The Grand Bizarre to come. The Grand Bizarre
Mack spent five years filming patterned fabrics in fifteen countries, frame by frame on a 16mm Bolex, until the cloth seems to dance. She cut it to pop songs she mostly wrote and recorded herself.
Wasteland No. 3: Moons, Sons
A silent short made from plant matter: leaves locked in ice, oleander, hyacinth and dandelion seed, laid out against dark cloth.