IAN KELLY

Documentary Media Portfolio

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a director of animated documentaries, I use the unique qualities of the animated form to enliven stories of personal and historical memory. My own close familial relationship with memory loss helped me to form an understanding of memory as something precious and ephemeral. I believe that the preservation and recitation of memories is an act with great societal and political significance — one that activates our relationship to the past as a presence rather than an inert artifact. My practice aligns the formal qualities of animation with characteristics of memory including fragmentation, transformation, and an emphasis on sensory details. By emphasizing animation’s inherent subjectivity, I invite the audience to consider how fantasy and performance also shape memory.
My practice is one of considered transformation of actual images. I heavily rely on recorded footage and still images as the basis for my animated images. From these source materials I rotoscope the subjects — transforming the image into an animated reproduction. This process of manipulation and variation of the source suggests how reproduction distorts reality. I often use analogue techniques, such as direct animation on film leader, in combination with advanced digital animation in 2D and 3D software. These practices create uniquely styled animations, which deepen the stories and memories they are representing. My artist practice is always rooted in the desire to tell meaningful, emotional, stories which bring the present moment into conversation with the past.

SOFT LIGHTS AND SILVER SHADOWS

A family remembers the memories forgotten by a loved one in this kaleidoscopic animated documentary.
14 min, Animation, 16mm, Digital; 2023
Thesis Film, MFA in Documentary Media Northwestern University

password: shadows

MEMORIA(L)

This beautifully animated documentary takes us back to Memorial Day, 1937, when Chicago police killed ten striking steelworkers. How do we remember this history?
9 min; Animation, Archival; 2022

Screenings & Accolades:

Cleveland Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Dayton Film Festival (Winner — Best Documentary Film), Kansas City Underground Film Festival, SCAD Film Festival, Hot Springs Film Festival, St. Louis Film Festival, Thomas Edison Film Festival (Winner — Jury Citation Award), Salem Film Festival

2023 Working Class Studies Association Symposium Panel, "The Memorial Day Massacre of 1937: Contemporary Artists, Scholars, and Union Activists Reimagine One of the Bloodiest Events in U.S. Labor History"

2022 Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program Grant Recipient

2023 Northwestern RTVF Festival Incentive Grant Recipient

Study Guide

EPK

THERE WAS WATER ONCE

In the year 2101, a sentient AI imagines what water was.
3 min; 16mm; 2023

EDDIE

An animated documentary about Dr. Eddie Henderson: jazz trumpet player, figure skater, M.D.
*9 min; animation; 2017*

EDDIE was selected for the 2018 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, 2018 Cleveland International Film Festival (Honorable Mention for Best Animated Short), 2018 SENE Film Festival (awarded Best Student Animated Short), 2018 American Documentary Film Festival, 2018 Salem Film Festival.