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Colorful, fairy-like animated clay figures fly across a digitized backdrop of desaturated budding tree branches. Then, two blue-gloved hands rip through the story’s backdrop. They capture the colorful clay fairies and separate and refigure the figures into pink and blue structured boxes.

A few minutes later, the fairy figures overpower the hands and return to a world of color. Music, ranging from a lullaby-esque piano to dissonant percussion, accompanies and synchronizes with the film, Evan Bode’s award-winning “Thine Own Self.”

Bode, a second-year graduate student in Syracuse University’s film program, was one of five filmmakers chosen as a winner for the Gotham Film & Media Institute’s Focus Features & JetBlue Student Short Film Showcase. Bode received a $10,000 grant for “Thine Own Self,” which advocates for resistance to oppressive social systems, specifically those relating to gender and identity, the graduate student said. Bode will also be recognized during the 2021 Gotham Awards ceremony on Monday in New York City, and his film will be shown on JetBlue’s inflight entertainment systems.

“Finding out, I was hugely honored,” Bode said. “It’s very humbling, and I’m grateful to be chosen and grateful to know that my work resonated.”

Bode said he knew that he was nominated for the award by his professor and program director, Kara Herold. He made the film in Herold’s class last year over the course of his first year in the MFA program.

When COVID-19 presented both artistic complications and prolonged isolation, Bode chose to make his short film “Thine Own Self” using stop-motion animation. The restrictions the pandemic set in place for film production teams led him to try animation instead, he said.

“You see a lot of clay figures, but it’s really only one piece of clay that I was animating and duplicating,” Bode said.

Over the span of five months, Bode worked on a little desk in his basement, with one little piece of clay. It was a long process creating the visuals, he said, as he would compose the musical score alongside the animations piece by piece in order to tie the whole idea together. Bode’s professors and peers were really supportive and helpful throughout the semester, he said.

“Thine Own Self” was produced as a stopmotion project that took five months to develop the visuals.Courtesy of Evan Bode

Herold called Evan’s film brilliant and said the film program at SU strives to foster an environment in which the students’ voices are appearing through their work.

“(The films) are all totally unique and from the voice of the filmmaker … in that way it’s helping people emerge as a totally unique artist,” Herold said.

The animations, the music and the idea were all part of Bode’s complete vision, she said.

“Thine Own Self” explores the topic of gender binaries and how the norms of masculinity and femininity are imposed upon people from birth. Bode used the connection between visuals and music, along with the absence of dialogue, to challenge himself into creating social commentary in a surreal and abstract way, he said. He views storytelling as a means of fostering compassion.

“I was trying to advocate breaking out of this rigid understanding of identity,” Bode said. “To something that is more complex and expansive in a story of liberation and getting back to this original space of when we were young and freer to be ourselves prior to these identities imposed on us.”

The graduate student composed the entire musical score on his laptop, matching the sound to the story. The music has a big role in shaping the narrative, he said. It moves from a space of freedom in the beginning to a controlled march and then back to the original melody.

Growing up in a creative and artistic family, Bode said he has always been interested in film, as well as art in all kinds of mediums like writing and music.

“Film stands out to me because it combines so many of those different art forms into one,” he said. “It’s been a lifelong passion.”

Bode is using the grant money to further his filmmaking craft, including working on an upcoming film that combines live action with animation.

Herold is excited to see what Bode’s continues to make. She described “Thine Own Shelf” as smart, praising his abstract delivery of a social justice message, and compared the film to playful and classic animations of the 1930s that inspired animators like Disney.

“I think this film will go on and be a festival success,” she said.

Published on November 28, 2021 at 11:11 pm