Oracle
A SHORT ART FILM BY ALICE INSTONE
“I was thinking about pilgrimages and how fun it would be to visit an Oracle, and how we probably just go to shopping centres now. Then I made the Old Bird as a sort of Oracle. Once she was sitting in the studio I began to want to bring her to life which is how the film began…”
– Alice Instone
Alice Instone has created a short film expressing her belief in art as consolation and our need for ritual, spectacle, catharsis, and mystery. Oracle' goes on a journey with a blue moon, bringing to mind dreams, the unconscious and popular songs. It travels though emotions and thoughts we might want to keep secret: sadness, anger, fear of the unknown and even the hereafter, and offers the tenderness and reassurance we all crave. We should allow ourselves to experience gentleness, renewal and beauty. In the words of the film new and gold and full of hope'.
Womb-like saturated reds create a heady quasi-religious atmosphere and the visual style nods to Alice's love of early technicolour films, mid century European fairytale cinema and even early Star Trek. The words of the Oracle poem are a silent punctuation - hymn boards, or supernatural messages from the ether. Embracing a low key playful humour in the birds and cats and a deliberately low-fi style, Oracle celebrates analogue over tech and storytelling over information. These cloak an underlying seriousness of purpose; a belief that we deeply crave sincerity, dignity, aestheticism and otherworldly comfort; an escape from the drab and petty.
GOLD WINNER BEST FANTASY FILM AT CANNES SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
GOLD WINNER BEST FANTASY FILM AT CANNES SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
