Yellow Dress, 4min., UK
Directed by Raph Isadora Seymour
What is she doing? Trying to make a garden? Trying to make something...and who or what is trying to stop her? Crude stop-motion makes startling and poetic images and tells a story of resilience and the desire for happiness for both the hero and the villain of the piece.

Get to know the filmmaker:

1. What motivated you to make this film?

I wrote a poem and decided to animate it. My friend and I had gone to Peckham Common to feed the crows. I liked their movements and cunning and was also interested in their sinister connotations and their innocence.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?

The idea came to me in 2022 and I was finished in early 2024.

3. How would you describe your film in two words!?

Puppet Poem.

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

The biggest obstacle in making the project was balancing my time. Working a job and having other creative projects, working in stops and starts and still maintaining a creative flow however I feel this alongside the stopwork animation and patchwork effects may have benefited the style of the piece.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

I was thrilled to hear feedback on my film. I have shown my animations at some other festivals and have always had to gage peoples reactions.

6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?

When I was a child I was very fascinated by automatons, also animation in general. I would play around with flip books and plasticine. As I left school I realized there didn't have to be rules when creating, and that freed me to be as experimental as I like and make projects for the sake of expression. I also started making shadow puppet animations in lockdown to entertain myself and those around me.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

Films I have watched most in my life would probably be Walkabout and Edward Scissorhands but an animation I always go back to is Hen his Wife by Igor Kovalyov.

8. What other elements of the festival experience can we and other festivals implement to satisfy you and help you further your filmmaking career?

Maybe a forum for the filmmakers and audience to discuss films and filmmaking.

9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site?

I found working with film freeway to be a great way to connect filmmakers with interesting festivals.

10. What is your favorite meal?

Curried Lentil soup

11. What is next for you? A new film?

I have already completed another animation called Dust with glove puppets of an eye, an ear, a nose and a mouth culminating in a sneeze and I have started one called The Wave Machine based on a short story I wrote of the same name.