USA, 2008, 40 Minute Running Time Genre/Subjects: Animation, Experimental
DIRECTOR: Bruce Bickford Producer: Bruce BickfordEditor: Bruce Bickford
Ask Bruce Bickford what CAS’L’ is about, and you’ll get an earful: “Mercenaries and other obnoxious brutes are trying to muscle in on the castle area. They’re looking for trouble and find it. Stray energies in the area morph them into grotesque bulbous heads. The conquistadors and barbarians of the castle are smoking the wrong brand of cigarettes that cause them to commit random violence, even against each other. Some little people and fairy folk defeat many of them.” Watch CAS’L’ yourself, meanwhile, and you’ll get an eyeful. According to scholar Michael Frierson, Bickford’s oeuvre bids you take “a hallucinogenic retreat into magical settings where figure and ground may transform into [one another] at any moment—enchanted settings in which modern technocrats are easy villains and nature is under siege.” If such places begin to sound far less removed from the real world than they would appear, so much more startling the triumph for Bickford. This silent presentation will be accompanied by a live performance from Denver’s own Bad Luck City, which has written a score exclusively for the occasion.