A tribute to the late, great artist, musician and animator Rosto, whose singular animated films inspired many.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2019
Animation NOW! Rosto
In 2019 the animation world lost one of its most inspired, uncompromising and innovative exponents. Dutch artist, musician and animator Rosto drew collaborators of the likes of Tom Waits and Terry Gilliam into his web. He used a potent mixture of raw imagination and hi-tech animation technologies to bring the world of his dreams to the big screen.
Everything’s Different, Nothing Has Changed is the entrée to the immersive savannah that Rosto traversed. It offers glimpses of his work as the creator of one of the first online graphic novels, Mind My Gap, and the vital energy his projects took from – and gave to – his experimental rock band Thee Wreckers.
Rosto’s subsequent tetralogy of films unleashes his power as a punk cartographer of the immersive world he simply called ‘Dream City’. No Place Like Home traces the first steps into this realm; Lonely Bones goes deeper, giving us a more detailed introduction to its denizens; and Splintertime reaches in further to give us characters who have haunted and inhabited Rosto’s work throughout his life. It all comes together with Reruns (also screening as part of Invert – Characters), which explores the twilight of the filmmaker’s vivid imagination. — MT
Everything’s Different, Nothing Has Changed 2017
A behind-the-scenes documentary charting the creative rise and development of Studio Rosto A.D and Thee Wreckers through their art, music and films.
No Place Like Home 2008
A moody, pulsating film delving into the uncertain terrain of ‘Dream City’.
Lonely Bones 2012
As the past is consigned to memory, the exploration of the dark topography ahead becomes all-consuming.
Splintertime 2015
An intense, bordering-on-surreal depiction of a band of dreamy spirits in an ambulance as it runs out of road.
Reruns 2018
The oldest of memories blend with the newest of constructed visions, hinting at an end just over the horizon.