Images by Keith Skretch
Sound by Ennio Morricone, “The Big Gundown”

To create this strata-cut animation, I planed down a block of wood one layer at a time, photographing it at each pass. The painstaking process revealed a hidden life and motion in the seemingly static grain of the wood, even as the wood itself was reduced to a mound of sawdust.

Official Selection, Chicago Underground Film Festival 2013
Official Selection, Brooklyn Film Festival 2013
Official Selection, Provincetown International Film Festival 2013
Official Selection, Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival 2013
Official Selection, DC Shorts Film Festival 2013

Strangers find their lives intertwined by acts of violence and corruption in Timboctou, a wryly humorous and provocative new play written by Alejandro Ricaño and set against the volatile backdrop of the Mexican drug violence. This world premiere production imagines Timboctou as a mysterious, unreachable refuge at the end of the earth and illustrates the narrow line between victim and victimized. Celebrated Mexico City director Martín Acosta leads a binational cast and creative team for this highly visual multimedia work, a unique collaboration between the CalArts Center for New Performance and its bilingual theater initiative Duende CalArts and The University of Guadalajara Foundation/Cultura UDG.