This disquieting film from 1997 is from the
mysterious Craig Welch, seen here to the left, about whom we could find little on the web, other than the
following much-used bio: "Craig Welch studied graphic design at the Centre
for Creative Studies in Detroit and ran a bookstore for eight years. He then
enrolled in the animation program at Sheridan College. He has had exhibitions
of drawings and paintings in Toronto galleries. In addition to commercial
animation work, Welch assisted on Toronto NFB studio productions."
What
he's doing now, we do not know, and as far as we can tell his last short film,
his fourth, entitled Welcome to Kentucky (2004), has yet to be freed into
cyberspace like his first and second ones, Disconnected (1988 / film)
and No Problem (1992 / film),
and this jewel here.
How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of
Angels, presented by National Film Board of Canada, is a tale as dark and
depressing as the drawings are B&W. The graceful, almost archaic-looking animation
exudes a Victorian feeling that brings to mind the drawing of Edward Gorey (22 Feb 1925 — 15 April 2000). The short is a poetic tale of a recluse preoccupied
with intricate mechanisms and skeletal remains who has an obsessive desire for
a mysterious woman in black (played by Louise Leroux), who may or may not
actually be there, or who may or may not be an angel — from above or of death,
a point perhaps immaterial.
Beautiful and unsettling, oddly humorous in
its presentation of Rube Goldberg extremes, How Wings Are Attached to the Backs
of Angels is mysteriously tragic and oddly unsettling, and follows a dream
logic that places it well within the sphere of Romantic Surrealism.
Enjoy.
