Journey

Stylistically strong, moments of Journey recall the heightened realities of railway posters. That's further strengthened by subject, a journey by train that starts in the flickering shadow of the first Forth bridge and ends at a Miyazaki seaside, bare feet and balled rocks.

Picture postcard digital paintings, animation within and upon, the stamp of life to give them motion. Sean Sevestre's short film fits within two minutes but covers miles of territory. It's available here and if you've a moment, spare it.

Screened as part of 2023's Manipulate festival it would have enjoyed home field advantage in Edinburgh. That's not to make light of its quality. Sevestre is a professional illustrator and while he talks about making the film almost by accident, the deliberate, considered nature of his style lends itself to contemplation. Manipulate aims to showcase a variety of styles of animation, and as Journey screened with Cinegraffic Score even in the diptych they achieved it. Each undeniably animation, each given life by vision's persistence, but each so distinct in style and tone that there is room between them to wonder and to wander.

Much as those posters for the various Railways serve as a shorthand for locomotion to leisure, this is a modern invitation to languor in landscape. Much as Soviet Realism sought to summon the future through and for iron men and cycles of hammers, Great and Western and London and North Eastern were a gang of four for ganging for holiday. Similarly of an era, headphones and character bags, facemasks and hair-dye, Journey is a document of one and an invitation to others.

The animation is varied. Sometimes it is a tableau past which the environment moves, at others that classic boundary between painted backgrounds and moving foreground figures. It is, much like the art, often minimal. The phrase 'somewhat vivants' is probably as appropriate as it is unhelpful. Small touches like the shape of the buzzing of a phone give us room to reminisce. The fabric on the seats might not match exactly, but it matches enough that I can feel them behind me. The platform could be one of a dozen or so, but the flavour of Haymarket or Waverley is less about which outpost of which coffee chain is nearest than the particular shade of near-municipal siding that sits like a dated layer on the drift of passages past.

I avoided the rabbit hole of trying to place the port and Portakabin at the end, staccato progress enough to give a sense of a somewhere. It might be real, it doesn't matter. I have watched it several times now, each time spotting some fresh delighting detail, my attention caught like a barnacle at the beach. Small but closely held.

Journey was constructed over a period of more than a year. Pay close attention to what amounts to an artistic declaration at the end. It's the heart of the thing, as small as it is, but like the barnacle perfectly formed to grab and hold fast.