
Series 4
Animation
Overview
This experimental short documents the clash, sometimes obsessive, sometimes glorifying, between humans and their mechanized environment. Using photographs, the animator creates varying perspectives through optical manipulation and changing colour, achieving bold and provocative effects.
Top Cast


Carole Laure
Carole Laure
(voice)
Carole Laure
(voice)
Jacques Thisdale
Jacques Thisdale
(voice)
Jacques Thisdale
(voice)
Lucile Vernet
Lucile Vernet
(voice)
Lucile Vernet
(voice)
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For the multimedia exhibition Tangenten I (Tangents I), Dammbeck and co-organizer, sculptor and painter Frieder Heinze had planned to collaborate on a film that would combine non-camera animation with 35mm footage of a train ride between the two Dresden districts of Radebeul and Pieschen. When the exhibition was banned in 1978, Heinze turned to other projects, but Dammbeck continued working on the film by himself. Metamorphoses I—the first experimental film ever to be shown publicly in East Germany—marks the filmic beginning of Dammbeck’s long-term art project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).

The sun’s energy circulates throughout the earth, feeding the cycle of life. Everything is connected in a natural loop, which repeats, like the circular discs of magical optical toys. This perfectly balanced rhythm is disrupted by human excess, throwing the cycle out of orbit and temporarily stopping the circulation of energy in nature.

When 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone, and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good.

This is a didactic film in disguise. A progression of brilliant geometric shapes bombard the screen to the insistent beat of drums. The filmmaker programmed a computer to coordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.

In an alternate Manhattan, two researchers-Robert Lang and Jeff Hawthorne-are drawn into Project STARLING, a covert operation buried deep within the Titanpointe building. When Hawthorne breaks protocol and vanishes into a mysterious portal, the city reels from unexplained phenomena. Lang is forced to navigate a collapsing reality as STARLING agents turn ruthless and the boundaries between dimensions begin to rupture. As transformations unfold and the city descends into chaos, both men confront forces beyond comprehension-shifting identities, spectral adversaries, and a growing sense that something vast and irreversible is approaching.















