The Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, called “essential viewing every year” by Cine-File.info, returns to REDCAT for the third year. Founded in 2010, Eyeworks is a curated annual festival that showcases abstract animation and unconventional character animation. The Eyeworks Festival at REDCAT features two programs of short films, and a solo retrospective screening of work from the 2018 festival guest, Japanese filmmaker Naoyuki Tsuji. The two curated lineups of short films will include classic and recently restored films, works from rising names in the field, and premieres of new works. Filmmakers in the 2018 festival include Maureen Selwood, Oliver Laric, Takeshi Murata, Larry Cuba, and Jon Rafman.

In person: Naoyuki Tsuji

Working with a distinctive drawn-and-erase technique, Naoyuki Tsuji’s dreamlike films are a moody blend of myth, fantasy, and horror. Evoking Deren, Kentridge, and Miyazaki, his work moves with a stream-of-consciousness fluidity, depicting scenarios that are simultaneously mesmerizing and disturbing. A schoolboy inhales a drawing, and is transformed into a cloud that consumes his classmates. A woman in a car crash is awakened by licks from the moon. Reflections a pond turn wicked and take on a life of their own. Tsuji’s films are filled with transformations of bodies, dreamy violence, dark eroticism, and an elegant drifting logic all their own. His work has been presented at the Image Forum Festival, Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Media City Film Festival, Images Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Ottowa International Animation Festival.