The Animal Riot
McIntosh utilised drawings from the collection of Marina Vancatova, a Russian primatoligist based in Prague who has studied the picture making activity of primates for over twenty years.
The apes became scenic artists, rendering the emotions and outlines of a farm and its environs where an uprising of domesticated animals takes place. The only human who can speak Animal, Omelko, converses with the animals and translates the dissidents and the conformists.
For scientific purposes, the apes draw in response to empirical geometric shapes on A4 paper. Circles, triangles, zig-zags, broken circles and straight lines; to test how they will respond to systemic visual cues.
These reactionary marks made by the animals accumulate in the film as indications of a potential free state, which is never realised by the marionettes. These 3d animals and people, constructed, styled and choreographed by McIntosh, perform the narrative and move like hand held puppets despite or to spite technology.