May 4
International Film Forum: CONSUMING SPIRITS
Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan, 2013, US, 135 min.) — Presented by Laska Jimsen & David Lefkowitz, screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director
“Consuming Spirits, an animated feature by Chris Sullivan, is a defiant — or maybe, even better, an oblivious — exception to the rules and patterns of contemporary cartoon entertainment. At a time when animation is expected to be computer-generated, three-dimensional and relentlessly upbeat, Mr. Sullivan’s film is flat, handmade and melancholy, a dark and painful fantasy for grown-ups.
I would be inclined to welcome it as an eccentric protest against digital tyranny, but Consuming Spirits is so much more than that. The product of 15 years of labor — undertaken by Mr. Sullivan in collaboration with his friends and members of his family, using paper, ink and a 16-millimeter camera — it is a work of obsessive artisanal discipline and unfettered artistic vision. You have never seen anything like it. […] As its title suggests, Consuming Spirits is both about the power of (figurative) ghosts and the literal effects of drunkenness.
It weaves a complicated, intoxicating spell and sets the mind running in several directions at once, not all of them toward happy places. The fact that these realms are represented in exaggerated, often comical pictures does not make them less disturbing, but it does create a sense of enchantment that turns bad feelings inside out.” (A. O. Scott, New York Times)