Double Film Screening

Presented at the historic Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, Decade (2024) by Paul Rodgers and Meander (2024) by Lexi Bass are two films by University of Kentucky Animation professors that explore family histories through animation and experimentation. Both films focus on relationships with the artists’ mothers.

 

 

"Decade" is an experimental documentary of the animator’s upbringing, chronicling from birth to adolescence his journeys at the intersection of a prescribed faith and a larger world. Constructed from family photos, this animated commentary depicts the relationship between a religious mother and her son whose coached memorization and recitation of a Rosary prayer evolves from empty mimicry and absurd tedium, to comforting ritual. "Decade" is a dream-like, non-narrative slideshow that uses dark humor and metaphor to capture the messiness of growth and the transformation of our belief systems.

 

 

As artificial intelligence replaces workers in our increasingly elderly global population, companies engineering AI race robots amidst human inequities and emerging problems of AI sentience. The sum spells disaster for the human race in the dystopian world of Meander, which evokes both ancient Greek mythology and near-future science fiction. Meander finds herself destitute in the Underworld with no way to finance escape other than offering her biological potential for surrogate pregnancy up to dubious experimentation in an underground facility. Meanwhile, filmmaker/narrator, Lexi Bass, recounts her experiences of pregnancy and motherhood at the precipice of age 40 and the loss of her own mother shortly after, questioning the future of humanity at the precipice of Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Super-Intelligence.