The Pub
The inner nature of a pub's daily clientele comes to life in this rotoscoping animation short.
2012 | 5 - 10 | Animation | Mockumentary | Social Issues | UK
Joseph Pierce is one of the most interesting animators around. The Pub is the third installment, along Stand Up and A Family Portrait in a trilogy of short films that use rotoscoping animation. Using this technique, Pierce manages to distort reality, creating works that combine pure realism and hallucinatory, nightmare-like elements. Shot entirely in a pub in London’s Camden Town, the film follows a typical day in the bartender’s life and her interactions with the bizarre humanity that populates the bar. The idea of observing the everyday life of such a popular place is reminiscent of the British “social cinema”, and the tragicomic tone of the short seems to blend together Ken Loach’s realism and the humor of the ” proletarian comedies” of the late 90s. Pierce, however, wants to go beyond the documentary approach and dig deeper into the human condition. His animations deform and distort the various characters, revealing their true natures or their deepest fears and troubles. Confused tourists, regular costumers, loud drunks, extremely annoying bachelorette parties transform into threatening and menacing monsters and animals: an ugly and desperate humanity reveals itself in the eyes of an increasingly tired waitress. Realism turns into expressionism, and reality is transformed to show its true essence.
Flavia Ferrucci
