Ian Emes Retrospective: ‘Visual Mastermind behind The Dark Side of the Moon’ (12)

This year, we are extremely honoured to be presenting a retrospective of Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning director/animator, Ian Emes.

After the screening, Ian Emes will partake in a Q&A with Ros Sinclair, Lecturer in Visual Communication at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, as part of ArtsFest’s In Conversation strand (see page 7).

Emes’s career took off when Pink Floyd saw the animation he’d made to their track, ‘One of These Days’. They loved it, and consequently commissioned Emes to make a number of other films for them, including the iconic clocks sequence from ‘Time’. Emes went on to produce music videos for a number of hugely popular musicians and bands, including Duran Duran, Wings, and Mike Oldfield. In 1984 he won a BAFTA and was nominated for an Oscar for his short, Goodie Two Shoes.

Please note that we’ll also be screening Ian Emes’s short The Chain and his cult classic feature, The Yob from 7:15pm at The Crescent Theatre this evening. Come early to get a seat as it may be very busy! All synopses below are written by Ian Emes himself.

The Beard [1978] (6min)
For this last animated short before launching into live-action, I took an anti-technique approach, drawing directly onto paper and inventing each scene day-by-day in a stream of consciousness approach. The process became a monster in itself, requiring nine months of continuous drawing, in which I lived the character’s surreal confrontations with the beard, second by second, in a kind of super slow-motion action replay.
The Dreams of Jung [1976] (3min)
Shooting live-action scenes in studio, I projected the footage onto cells and traced them, distressing the images with paint and sandpaper, to create vague, impressionistic sequences. The resulting ambiguity is something akin to a dream, open to interpretation.
A Secret Life [2010] (3min)
This Mini-DV video diary of Bucharest, treated with After Effects, points to my continuing interest in random moments and non-narrative storytelling, and the moods and feelings that can come from that. Regardless of, or perhaps because of the intuitive approach, something personal comes through.

International Airport Plastic [2010] (3min)
Something curious happened while shooting this film at various airports during my travels. I captured moments I hadn’t seen. While initially attracted to the architectural atmosphere of airport lounges late at night, twilight zones that belonged neither to country nor time zone, it was the people that took the attention, drifting souls, coming and going with dreams in their pockets, floating by in a ghostly ballet.
The Wall [1990] (4min)
Roger Waters asked me to shoot a film for the global broadcast of the biggest rock concert ever, to be staged on a dusty Potsdamer Platz, previously a ‘no-man’s land’ dividing East and West Germany. I shot the film in an eerily deserted East Berlin, projecting the Marching Hammers onto what remained of the Berlin Wall from a giant projector mounted on a flatbed truck, escorted by East German police.
Pink in Berlin [1990] (1min)
This sequence for Roger Waters’ The Wall was filmed shortly after re-unification, and follows the masked figure of Pink as he staggers through a night time Berlin.
Flightpath Tegel [2009] (4min)
This film is a music poem to Spaghetti Junction, the infamous intersection that dominates our city. Living in it’s shadow for most of my youth, only later did I realize how profoundly it’s monumental structures had permeated my aesthetic.
Egg Art [1994] (1min)
The most illogical of all of my commercials, this is an attempt to make a satire about the pretentiousness of the art world, by making a film that is itself pretentious.
Space and the Woods [2008] (2min)
Making this video for Late of the Pier was a revelation, in that I was recreating a style from 3 decades ago, using digital technology. Scenes that had previously taken months to animate, took only days. It confirmed my suspicion that simplicity wins through, and that for all the complexity and bluster of special effects, it is a pure idea that has the power to affect the viewer.
Gynophobia [2011] (4min)
Originally intended to be in 3D, this open ended collaboration with dance artists Flockdance and sound designer Steve D’Agostino, is a work in progress.
Sex is Death is Flying [1977] (3min)
My most technically ambitious hand-animated 2D film, which many people thought to be computer generated. Taking a year to produce, I drew, painted and airbrushed every frame. With the digital revolution about to happen, this was my penultimate animated film before moving into live action.
The Chauffeur [1982] (3min)
I wrote, designed, edited and directed this film in the absence of Duran Duran while they were on tour. I asked Gilly Taylor to shoot it. Gilly had shot Roman Polanski’s black and white films of the sixties. It was my intention to colourise segments of the film, but Gilly’s cinematography was so beautiful that the band decided to let it stand on its own merits.
The Dark Side of The Moon [1974] (4min)
Pink Floyd’s masterpiece, and one of the greatest albums of all time. Having seen my film French Windows on BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test, the band commissioned me to make their first-ever animated film, which subsequently toured the world.
French Windows [1972] (4min)
My first animated film, inspired by the track ‘One Of These Days’ from Pink Floyd’s Meddle album. The film was a continuation of my work as a painter. I was self-taught, inventing my own techniques through trial and error. The film went on to win awards across the world and lead to an invitation to work with Pink Floyd.