The Amazing Flying Marshmallow House
Super-8 film, 3.5 minutes, black and white, 2012
The projector replaces the campfire's flickering light as a father tells fanciful tales to his son about the wonderfully magical world of his past. The absurdity of the floating house within a super-8 film creates a subtext of filmmaker stubbornness and delusional thinking in the face of logic, science, and progress.
At the time I made this film and my son was younger, at bedtime he would ask me to regale him with stories of the marshmallow house. I was usually tired myself and created stream of consciousness tales without logic or moral. I also quickly forgot the tales until asked to follow up with the next chapter. As I told him these, we lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, reflections bouncing, mixing with our imaginations. The crudeness of the drawings for this project suggest the haphazard approach I take to the construction of these stories, but also the intimate, hands-on approach where every nuance comes directly from me, unfiltered and unrefined. It is raw and terrible and absurdly unbelievable, which is why he loves to hear them and the reason I continue to tell them.
Sequel: Marshmallow House and the Giant