Fantastic Fest 2009

"It's Beatrix Potter in Hell" (Kier-La Janisse, Fantastic Fest)

We couldn’t be more excited to introduce you to this astonishing, 13-years-in-the-making independent masterwork - written, produced, animated, and directed by a single woman, who also built every character and set. Bear with us as we attempt to describe the indescribable: Our story opens with a group of furry, beaked creatures who live in an oak tree and create a doll in the image of a woman. They take an egg from a nearby stream, place it in the doll’s womb, and hang her in the oak as if crucified. While they sleep, a trio of red-eyed bourgeois mice arrive via a turtledrawn carriage, steal the doll and take her home with them. The beaked creatures embark on a hallucinatory journey in search of their cherished doll figure, as the mice get drunk on blood tea. Sunflowers sprout with skulls in their centres. Things begin to get strange.

Intrigued? You damn well better be, because this dark, hypnotic fairy tale for adults is a triumph of creative passion as well as an all-consuming force of nature, brimming with wonder, twisting with madness and hitting its eccentric marks with a uniqueness seldom seen in modern film. In 1993, Christiane Cegavske, known in the indie-film world for her animated sequences in Asia Argento’s THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS, began building characters at home, her story evolving and mutating with each new creation (“they help to finish the script”). Armed with little else than a Bolex camera and credit card, she began a production journey that would take her many years before seeing her creation to completion. The stunning end result of Cegavske’s many years of obsession is an engrossing headtrip that is equally touching, disturbing, adorable and gruesome. It is a poetic, dialogue-free aria of unrestrained imagination. (Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival)

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL 2006 Winner, BEST ANIMATION, San Francisco Independent Film Festival 2006. Winner, BEST DIRECTOR, Spudfest 2006