What is the film about?

Imbued Life is a film about a young woman’s connection with the life force of nature. She uses her talent for taxidermy to “restore” the animals to their natural habitat. However, the true search for the answers begins when she starts finding a roll of undeveloped film in each of the animals she treats. Her obsession drives her to seek the explanation of the connection she feels, haunting her dreams, as well as her waking moments.

What influenced it?

Initially the inspiration for this film came to us after as a reflection upon taxidermy animals. For some time we had a pine marten sitting on our shelf in our apartment in Zagreb. The animal preserved in a moment; a still life staring down, as if it were expressing a part of its self but we were unable to communicate a response.
We are interested in exploring the uncanny, an unnerving sensation which taxidermy can impart. Likewise, parallel sensibilities can be found in stop motion animation forms. In our films we like to explore the borders between the animate and inanimate, living and dead.

A little background information...

The protagonist in Imbued Life has an introspective journey in which she explores her connection with the natural world. With this film we wanted to express her emotional journey and illustrate this idea of a deeper connection with nature.
Primarily we wanted to make a film which would encourage the audience to reflect about the topic of consciousness in the natural world and hopefully feel more empathetic towards it.

How was the film made?

The film was made using stop-frame animation techniques. We prefer to make as much of the effects in camera as possible. For the abstract sequences of the film we used bleach sprayed onto photo prints to create the dissolving colours. Artificial fur was used for the animals in the film and no animals were harmed for the production.