Spent

Spent (Dir. Brett Ingram and Christina Clum, 1994, 7 minutes)

Spent is a dark stop-motion tableau about chaos, control, and destiny featuring an unlikely cast of puppets.  Set to a mantra-like score (by D-Tox Records’ Geezer Lake) resembling a self-help tape from hell, trapped demons and prisoners of monotony populate a craggy subterranean purgatory, each driven to its own course of destiny by an apocalyptic cyclist.

When the decaying charioteer’s whip becomes entangled in the spokes of his static cycle, the ensuing meltdown sparks a spiritual flight to the proverbial mountaintop.

Spent screened on PBS North Carolina, and at twenty festivals, museums, and cinemas in the U.S. and abroad, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Humboldt International Film Festival, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the 2019 Animattikon Project in Paphos, Cyprus, and a retrospective screening at the Spectacle Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. Spent won eight awards, including Best Animated Film at the James River Festival of the Moving Image, and Best Experimental Film at the Red River Film Festival.