Duncan Major designed Imprint as an ode to his mentor, Tara Bryan, and in doing so has crafted a film that speaks passionately to the union of physical and emotional labour in the service of creation. “Using the printing equipment [Tara] left me as an instrument for animation, I wanted to express the affection we shared for working by hand, for the creative process and for words and letters,” says Major in his director’s statement for Imprint. The animated documentary short is now streaming from the National Film Board of Canada.
The film offers a series of fast-paced letterpress animations, watercolour paintings, cut-outs, and photography in a mixed-media format that illuminates the screen with the tremendous love Major holds for his mentor and the craft of printing and animation. As the audience is marvelled by the variety of images, the soundscape artfully blends symphonic movements with the mechanical, repetitive sounds of a printing press to sufficiently enrapture the viewer in a truly indescribable atmosphere. Imprint thus becomes one of the few films that are delightfully colourful both in their visual appearance but also in their aural atmosphere.
Neatly nestled within the playful visuals is a brief lyrical dedication to Tara in the form of a poem that centres on “You & I.” Deeply personal in its emotion, the poem plays out as an act of remembrance, preservation, and celebration of Tara, her creativity, and the sensitivities of the relationship between humanity and art. In its entirety, from concept to creation, Imprint functions as an incredibly human endeavour, a much-needed respite at a time when our everyday lives continue to be bothered by the proliferation of “art” generated by artificial intelligence.
Watch Imprint below from the NFB:
Imprint, Duncan Major, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
