Monday, July 18, 2011

Suckathumb



Suckathumb

Calgary, 2010

9:15

Dir: Xtine Cook

HD Video

Live Action/Animation

Horror



If you watch closely and manage to hold it in your mind’s eye for about nine minutes, you’ll notice the opening shot of Suckathumb – a miniature camp with a figure seated by an open fire - foreshadows its ending. Of course it does so without giving away what’s in store, thank goodness. But the inescapable cycle suggested by this bookending only contributes to Suckathumb’s chilling effect. As a child, writer- director Xstine Cook owned a book of cautionary poems by Heinrich Hoffman that included The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb. Presumably this film is her way of exorcising the gothic demons left with her by that little volume. Hoffman may have written Poetry for the Four, Five and Six Year Old more to amuse adults than to instruct children, and Cook’s piece certainly is not for the young and impressionable. Suckathumb is a lushly coloured and richly textured mix of puppetry, animation and live action with an engaging and amusing performance by Cirque du Soleil clown performer Mooky Cornish. Cook herself, with the help of some fantastical make-up, plays three roles including the Tall Tailor, who as far as I’m concerned completes, with the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, an unholy trinity of unforgettable film characters designed to keep children awake all night.


XTINE COOK

A mask and puppet maker and experimental theatre artist for over twenty years, Xstine Cook’s new primary art practice is the making of short films. Cook studied mask and puppetry in Bali, Italy, France, California, and on the West Coast of Canada with Tsimshian carver Victor Reece. She trained at the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre in California and is infamous as the co-founder of Green Fools, of which she was co-Artistic Director for thirteen years. Currently, Cook is the Artistic Director of the Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS), which she also founded, and Curator of the International Festival of Animated Objects, a biennial celebration of mask

and puppetry in Calgary.