Death is Smoking My Cigars

Afterimages(en)

A film-poem created for Counterclock Journal's 2023 Patchwork: Film x Poetry fellowship, featuring an original poem by Mackenzie Duan and animation by Evan Bode.

A Child's Garden of Poetry(en)

Poems by some of the greatest writers of all time are brought to life through lyrical animation and readings by some of today’s most respected performers.

Hedgehog's Home(hr)

In a lush and lively forest lives a hedgehog. He is at once admired, respected and envied by the other animals. However, Hedgehog’s unwavering devotion to his home annoys and mystifies a quartet of insatiable beasts: a cunning fox, an angry wolf, a gluttonous bear and a muddy boar. Together, the haughty brutes march off towards Hedgehog’s home to see just what is so precious about this “castle, shiny and huge.” What they find amazes them and sparks a tense and prickly standoff.

A Thousand and One Nights(cs)

Five different exploits of Sinbad the sailor where he gets mixed up with the pretty daughters of exotic potentates, with powerful monsters that threaten his existence, and with all sorts of teeming jungle life.

Two Faces(en)

Loose impressionistic brushstrokes sketch a series of portraits of two faces, one male and one female, while the verse on the soundtrack tells the tale of both one and a thousand relationships.

Night on the Galactic Railroad(ja)

Giovanni currently lives a dreary life of near non-stop work. At school, his peers ridicule him incessantly, and his employer at work is distant and cold. As his isolation from society becomes unbearable, he suddenly finds himself on a train heading far away from his miserable home. Accompanied by Campanella, an acquaintance from school, Giovanni embarks on a journey that will define the rest of his life.

Lines(en)

Six poems written by six young prisoners animated to tell their stories, thoughts, fears and hopes.

The Young Lady and the Cellist(fr)

A cellist attempts to rescue a woman swept out to sea, only to find he must battle a series of overly possesive sea creatures.

相思（上）(zh)

After the Flower Wilted(km)

Based on the novel ‘Wilted Flower’ by Nou Hach, the film unfolds a gripping tale of grief and desperate hope. When Noun, the mother, breaks off her daughter's engagement to a struggling suitor in favor of a wealthier match, tragedy ensues. As her daughter's heartbreak consumes her, illness tightens its grip, pushing Noun to turn to ancient rituals for salvation.

How the Moon Conquered Pop(de)

Musicians inspired by the Moon. Since the Apollo landings, the Moon has entered popular consciousness like never before. A journey through pop music's lunar obsession.

Window Horses(en)

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she finds herself in the company of poets and Persians, all who tell her stories that force her to confront her past; the Iranian father she assumed abandoned her and the nature of Poetry itself. It’s about building bridges between cultural and generational divides. It’s about being curious. Staying open. And finding your own voice through the magic of poetry. Rosie goes on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and perhaps above all, understanding, through learning about her father’s past, her own cultural identity, and her responsibility to it.

They Are Here(en)

Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.

Marcel, your mother is calling you(fr)

Em direção à Ítaca(pt)

Forgetfulness(en)

A short film inspired by the poetry of Billy Collins.

Un spectacle interrompu(fr)

The Spring Night(ru)

A spring night is a poetic film which is based on the motives of the poem by V. Lugovsky. The film is devoted to the theme of fidelity to the battle traditions of revolutionary past, to the theme of human happiness the sense of it in the battle for high ideals.

The Whimsical Council(fr)

A young man opens the window of his attic room and discovers a lunar landscape which submerges him and threatens to imprison him in an eternal sheet of ice. He closes the window to escape this vision and hears from deep inside his soul the sound of a poem being sung.

Happy(en)

An animated poem about the fleeting nature of happiness.