Abigail Dixson-Boles' "Run North"

"Run North is a stop motion animation that depicts our distressing relationship with the environment through paper puppets, silhouettes, and live video. In this short film, Mother Nature is pursued through time and space by human hands that both threaten to destroy her and long to protect her. As she is chased from the mountains to the city, she moves through the seasons, through early springs, sparse winters, delayed autumns, and dry summers. She runs along degraded farmlands, littered highways, polluted rivers, and congested streets until she falls and has no other choice but to step into our hands, to reach out to us for help. Mother Nature has good reason to run from our hands, as we have continued to let her down time and time again. But we cannot afford to run from her. We have to reach out to her before it is too late, before we destroy ourselves in our futile attempts to control her. As long as Mother Nature continues to run through the cycle of the seasons, we will still be able to exploit her, but we will also be able to help her. We will still have a chance to reconcile our relationship with the earth, with the only home we have ever known. And for that there is reason to hope. The Mother Nature puppet was made out of black paper and wire before being animated on a greenscreen in Dragonframe. The silhouettes were created using live video of my own hands. The background video was taken over the course of a few years on drives around my hometown in Montgomery, Vermont, as well as trips down to New York City, where I go to college. The music, Angola Moon by an Eagle in Your Mind, came from the Free Music Archive. The film was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects."

·       Materials Used: paper, wire, live video, music