Beauty and brutality within an industrial dystopia. A disused gasworks yard in Athens becomes an infanticidal mother that ravages her offspring. The film deals with cruelty and the re imagining of an industrial space.

Direction, Camera, Animation Katerina Athanasopoulou
Editing, Sound Design Ian Clark
Music Stetit Angelus / Catherine Brasvlasky, Renard Thierry, Joseph Row / Pump Audio

The film started by walking through the remains of old, disused gasworks, shooting with a handheld digital camera. I was there looking for inspiration, without a storyboard or shotlist, but observing and imagining how these particular machines could come to life.

The live action was then masked and cut up digitally, removing the background elements mostly frame by frame. I used still images from the same machines to create extra 2D elements such as pipes and scaffolding. Further videos of working machines were cut out to animate the scaffolding. The entire process was like a collage of still and moving elements, created in After Effects and Photoshop, using the live action that I originally shot.

After calculating the 3D space, I created tentacles that flowed freely, attracting cell-like amoebas. The latter were composited on top and through the live action – animation mix.

Katerina Athanasopoulou