Alter Egos 2004

Alter Egos provides a disturbingly riveting account of the stories behind this year’s Oscar-winning animated short, Ryan. Ryan Larkin was a rising star of Canadian animation in the late 60s who dropped out and now begs on the streets of Montreal. Chris Landreth’s ‘animated documentary’ Ryan tells the story of Larkin’s disintegration and evokes his mental disarray through digital distortion of his face. Alter Egos discusses the careers of the animator and his ex-animator subject, incorporating interviews with both. Questioning the degree of exploitation entailed in Landreth’s project, it culminates in Larkin’s first encounter with Ryan.  

“Unsettling and moving… yielding vital questions about the divisions between art and life, the functionally sane and the mentally ill, and jerks and geniuses.” — Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly