Roger Ballen’s Theatre of Apparitions Trailer

Directed by Emma Calder Ged Haney 5mins animation Black & White

Roger Ballen commissioned Emma Calder and Ged Haney from Pearly Oyster Productions to animate and direct Roger Ballen’s Theatre of Apparitions. The film is based on a large series of photographic drawings made in collaboration with Marguerite Rossouw which feature in his forthcoming book The Theatre of Apparitions to be published 29th September 2016 by Thames & Hudson.

Short Synopsis of the film

Roger Ballen’s famous photographic work has been concerned with the interior architecture of standing structures, playing on the metaphor of the mind as a house of secrets and buried narratives. He has created a series of images inspired by the drawings and marks which people make on their environment that link his unique aesthetic to theatrical performance. Emma Calder and Ged Haney have used 2d computer animation and a brilliant music score by composer John Webb to turn these images into a film reminiscent of an old music hall or circus. In the theatre dismembered people, beasts and ghosts, dance, tumble, make love and tear themselves apart, plunging the audience into the nightmarish world of Roger Ballen’s subconscious.