Adebukola Bodunrin
Directing
Biography
Adebukola Bodunrin is a Nigerian-Canadian film, & video artist who explores language, culture, and media. In her collage animations, she manipulates film using unorthodox manual and digital techniques in order to produce unexpected cinematic experiences. Bodunrin’s animation work has been featured on the television series Transparent, and in KCET’s “Lost LA” series, for which she also won an LA Area Emmy award for segment direction. Her short animation, "The Golden Chain", created in collaboration with, award-winning graphic novelist, Ezra Claytan Daniels, is in the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work has been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Images Festival, Anthology Film Archives, the British Film Institute, Redcat Theater, Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago, Festival Animator, and the Black Cinema House.
Known For
The story of legendary blues performer, Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the 1920s and '30s.
Bessie
The Surrealist, "Exquisite Corpse" was a French Café parlor game. "Exquisite Moving Corpse" is more of an artist chain letter. 60 artists participated over a two-year period, beginning in March 2020. Each invited artist made a one minute video in response to the last frame of the previous minute.
Exquisite Moving Corpse
After cheating on her mean boyfriend, Lewis, Brownie is hospitalized by a series of severe accidents. Instead of visiting her in the hospital, Lewis (assistant to the Dean of the local university) helps investigate two professors suspected of sleeping with students.
Crimes Against Humanity
Animation by Adebukola Bodunrin. Music by Nicole Mitchell.
The Ooli Moves
A partially destroyed fragment of Powell and Pressburger's 1951 Technicolor dream film "Tales of Hoffman", becomes a site of a ruptured fantasy.
Even When Life is Sad, People Still Have a Good Time
Wumni, a reclusive young Nigerian immigrant, becomes convinced that a mysterious object approaching Earth's orbit holds the key to her loneliness. Determined to decode the alien signal, she enlists the help of Jenny, a stranger and owner of a music shop. Adapted from the short comic by award-winning graphic novelist and screenwriter, Ezra Claytan Daniels, We Are Not Alone is a lo-fi sci-fi tale that delves into themes of connection, expectation, and false promises.
We Are Not Alone
"Gather + Listen" is an animation that focuses on the subtle movements and rhythms that unconsciously happen at an owambe, a Nigerian street party. As people come together in joy, their hearts begin to beat to the same rhythm, as if united in happiness.
Gather + Listen
The distant future: a Nigerian space station in a remote corner of the galaxy orbits an artificial pinpoint of matter so dense it cannot exist in our solar system. A first-time collaboration between experimental filmmaker Adebukola Bodunrin and graphic novelist Ezra Claytan Daniels, The Golden Chain finds the two artists intertwining their contrasting aesthetics to revisit the themes of the Yoruba creation tale.