LE TIGRE DE TASMANIE
THE TASMANIAN TIGER
Vergine Keaton / France / 2018 / 13 min / Colour
The Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, is a marsupial that became extinct at the beginning of the twentieth century. Only visual fossils remain of it, traces of an irretrievably lost past. The period films that show the last surviving specimen before extinction, forced into a cage, are recomposed by the director into a sinuous dance, which deconstructs the natural elements: mountain, earth and magma are the foundations of an animation that covers the depths of time, returning an animal to its world. Accompanied by the syncopated rhythm of the soundtrack, the cycle of matter regenerates and reconstructs a new universe, a natural utopia in which even the extinction changes into rebirth, giving us back an intact natural environment. And it is through the power of an image, a simulacrum of life, that the gaze can go beyond the bars of memories and conquer a lost horizon.
Vergine Keaton
A young French director, Vergine Keaton studies graphic arts and film in Lyon. In 2007 she directed her first short animation, Je criais contre la vie, ou pour elle, selected at Cannes in the ACID section. Marzevan, her second work, was screened at Les Sommets du Cinéma d'animation, Belo Horizonte, Animanima and Riverside, garnering various prizes.
Credits
Subject Vergine KeatonScreenplay Vergine KeatonSound Lionel GuenounEditing Rosalie LoncinMusic Jean-Sébastien Nouveau / Martin DuruProduction company Sacrebleu Productions