Stop & Go’ Screening At Historic Fifth Street School

Visual Artists, Filmmakers Will Showcase Their Stop-Motion Techniques

Kissing hats, elephants driving, a man who turns into the sun, and dinosaurs roaming the countryside rarely happen in real life, but at the stop-motion film screening called Stop & Go at the Historic Fifth Street School in April, all of this will become ordinary. Established filmmakers and visual artists will use stop-motion techniques to tell stories, examine visual phenomena and make political statements in a collection of short videos.
 
The city of Las Vegas will play host to the Stop & Go screening at 7 p.m. on Friday,  April 17, at this Historic Fifth Street School located at 401 S. Fourth St. in downtown Las Vegas. The screening is free and open to the public. 
 
The line-up of videos includes national and international artists and is curated by San Francisco Bay Area artist and animator Sarah Klein. Klein, who uses hand-drawn images and stop-motion animation in her own work, chose pieces that explore the possibilities of stop-motion processes. The animators breathe life into magazine cutouts, homemade drawings, everyday objects and even the body itself.
 
Selected videos in the Stop & Go screening include “The Manipulators” by Clare Rojas and Andrew Jeffrey Wright, who alter and collage images from fashion magazines to create an entirely different story. Intricate paper-cutout circles by sculptor Jen Stark become a series of regurgitating rainbows and mysterious organic structures in “Papermation.” Quilt-maker Sherri Wood and animator Ignacio Alcantara collaborate on “Sewing for Jesus” as they animate the making of a quilt that honors the missing American and Iraqi citizens who have died in the Iraq War. Young students from the Croatian animators workshop SAF Cakovec Studio create a darkly funny animation of two characters and their mishaps in “We’ve All Fallen From Mars.” Comic illustrator Lilli Carré creates a high-wire act of sleepy time bears, black crows and senior folk in “For the Birds.”
 
The complete list of artists includes Ignacio Alcantara, Tommy Becker, Lilli Carré, Pete Davies, Samara Halperin, Meredith Holch, Sean Horchy, Stephanie Hutin, Andrew Kelleher, Lana Kim, Sarah Klein, Mike Leavitt, Michael McHam, Laurie O’Brian, Saelee Oh, Mel Prest, Clare Rojas, Judith Selby, SAF Cakovec Studio, Jen Stark, Melinda Stone, Claudia Tennyson, Sherri Wood, Aeneas Wilder and Andrew Jeffery Wright.
 
 Call 229-3515 for more information or visit www.artslasvegas.org.