MEMORY — current posts — Fantasy/Animation

Therapies and Rituals

Anyone who has spent some time at film festivals will be familiar with a certain tendency in non-fiction cinema: film-makers turning process into therapy, and their film itself into a document of their psychological and personal journey as they deal with unsolved family issues or the need to find identity or come to terms with loss or (rarely) happier aspects of the human condition. A number of titles come to mind even as I type: from Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015) to Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s How to Save a Dead Friend (2022). It is very much a formula, the popularity of which owes more than a little to the widely-held belief, among programmers and agents, that these films fulfil their obligation to the art-house crowds (you can’t go wrong with meta-cinema) while also basking in the broader appeal of shared human experiences.

EDITORIALPM CicchettiMarch 13, 2026EMOTION, MEMORY, STOP-MOTIONComment

Mortality over Legacy: An Analysis of The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn is a fantasy feature-length animation that studies the essence of mortality. Adapted from Peter S. Beagle’s 1968 novel of the same name, it was produced by Rankin and Bass Production in 1982 and animated by Topcraft, the Japanese studio that would later splinter to become Studio Ghibli. The film follows an immortal unicorn’s journey to find the rest of her species, and it is in representing her interactions and personal struggle with the other characters she encounters, The Last Unicorn weaves an allegorical tale about the nature of humanity and the framework of mortality. Throughout her journey, the unicorn encounters characters wrestling with their own brief lives, and after an eternity of eternal youth confronts what a mortal life truly means. As I will demonstrate in this blog post, The Last Unicorn is a complex piece of memento mori literature due to its profound and intricate explorations of death, immortality, and the essence of a transient life.

EDITORIALHayden StaplesJune 9, 2023HOLLYWOOD, MAGIC, DEATH, MEMORY Comments

One of the Gods or a Mere Mortal: Fantasy, Fiction and Documentary Filmmakers

In this article I will explore the conceptual position a director occupies in the world they create or represent as a method for clarifying a film’s status as either fiction or documentary. As an animated documentary practitioner I am particularly interested in finding a balance between the seemingly limitless fantastic potential of animation and the duty of a documentary filmmaker to create authentic and ethical representations of people and the world.