Professor Duesing‘s animation “Tugging The Worm” is part of the program “Underground Cartoons” that will show at Lightbox Film Center in Philadelphia on Jan 20. He will have a Q & A following the screening. The program is part of “Independent Frames: American Experimental Animation in the 1970s and 1980s,” which originally screened at the Tate Modern.
This series examines the work of a group of American artists who approached film through independently-produced, frame-by-frame animations in the 1970s and 80s. Made primarily by artists with no formal animation training, the selection of films in this program incorporates autobiography, visual fantasy, abstraction, medium specificity and biting satire. Several works were broadcast at the time and others distributed on home video, affording these artists a level of success and reach beyond that which other artist-filmmakers of their era could attain. Through five screening program, “Independent Frames: American Experimental Animation in the 1970s + 1980s” highlights themes of the body and sexuality, abstraction and psychedelia, structure and composition, autobiographical reflection and the influence of commercial animation.