Films & Video

This is a selection of my films and videos. To see an assortment of experiments with cyanotype, photography, direct animation and other things, check out my Vimeo page and follow me on Instagram.


Hemorrhage                                  view on Vimeo

Digital, 30p, 4:07 minutes, 2023.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes
Sound Design: Peter Randlette


Animation against the end of Roe and the evisceration of women's right to choose. An iterative process incorporating rubbings, images, text and voices from the New York Times and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health arguments before the United States Supreme Court moves the film from formal experimentation to an expression of outrage about the effects of abortion bans on women's health.

Screenings: 2023 Seattle International Film Festival (premiere);First Place, Experimental Film Category, 2024 ASIFA East Animation Festival; Walla Walla Movie Crush Film Festival; MicroActs Artist Films Screening (London); Small Axe Radical Short Film Awards (Wales); Tacoma Film Festival; Local Sightings Film Festival (Seattle); Rising of Lusitania: Animadocs Film Festival (Lodz); BIDEODROMO International Experimental Film and Video Festival (Spain); Strangloscope – Experimental Video/Film, Audio, Performance International Festival (Brazil); Bread & Roses Film Festival (New Jersey); STUFF - South Texas Underground Film Festival; The Film Collective Short Film Festival (Pennsylvania); PIAFF, Paris International Animation Film Festival; 21st Annual Standing Rock International Shorts Festival (Ohio); First City Film Festival (Kansas); Women of Wonders Film Festival (Hawaii); Fisura (Mexico); Film Girl Film Festival (Chicago); Onion City Film Festival (Chicago); Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque); Tricky Women/Tricky Realities (Vienna); Arizona International Film Festival (Tucson); Humboldt International Film Festival; Pueblo Film Fest; Benson Film Festival (Omaha); Grand Rapids Feminist Film Fest; Crescent City Film Festival (New Orleans); Cauldron International Film and Video Festival (Salt Lake City); Palm Springs Animation Festival; We Like ‘Em Short Animation and Comedy Film Festival (Baker City). Honorable Mentions at the Experimental Film Fest (North Carolina) and Star International Film Festival (Italy). 


Amulet                                  view on Vimeo

16mm/Digital HD,1080, 30p, 2:17 minutes, 2022.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes
Sound Design: Peter Randlette

The bells, or koudounia, that goats and sheep in Crete traditionally wore served as amulets to ward off evil spirits. Still in use, they also help shepherds know where their flocks are and what they are doing. Animated to a track composed of koudounia samples, the imagery originated in cameraless techniques that include stencil and bleach on 16mm color stock, and cyanotype.

Screenings: Punto y Raya (Lisbon), Joburg Underground Film Festival (Johannesburg), Local Sightings and Engauge Experimental Film Festival (Seattle), Revolutions Per Minute (Boston), ASIFA East Animation Festival (NYC), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), The Poulsbo Film Festival, and the Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival.


Copper Perforation Loop Triptych                                  view on Vimeo

16mm/Digital HD,1080, 30p, 3:21 minutes, 2016.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes
Sound Design: Peter Randlette

Iterations of Copper Perforation Loop, an original piece of direct animation created by scraping emulsion off of 16mm black leader against a 5 inch diameter circular disc of perforated copper. The Triptych includes the original loop, and hand processed contact prints of it, one of which was printed onto Liquid Light treated clear leader.

Copper Perforation Loop Triptych has screened at Anima Mundi (Brazil), the 43rd NW Filmmakers Festival (Portland, OR), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque), Revolutions per Minute (Boston) and Anthology Film Archives 2017 series.


Perilous Experiment                                  view on Vimeo

16mm/Digital HD,1080, 30p, 2:46 minutes, 2016.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes
Sound Design: Peter Randlette

After I tried to explain to my mother what experimental animation was, she commented that the Latin root of the word experiment is "peri", suggesting a boundary, as in "perimeter." As she describes it, experimenting means to venture beyond boundaries, an action potentially full of peril. This is a three screen attempt to enact that idea using the direct animation technique of letterpress printing on 16mm film leader. A previous version was presented as a live projection performance in 2015. Printed on a Vandercook proof press using 10 and 12 point Gothic lead type at Community Print, Olympia WA. Digitally transferred, looped in AfterEffects.

-Premiere: Animation + Printmaking Showcase, for Flux; Southern Graphics Council International Conference, Portland, OR, 2016. Screened at Local Sightings Film Festival, Seattle.


Super Moon Sand Photograms                                  view on Vimeo

16mm expanded cinema performance, 5 minutes, 2014.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes

On the night of the first Super Moon of 2014 on the beach at Toleak Point in the Olympic National Park, I exposed about 7 feet of 7363 (hi-con Kodak 16mm film) by moonlight, creating the original negative on the left. The strip on the right is a positive contact print made in the studio shortly thereafter. Both were hand processed and bear the marks and scratches of their making. The moonlight struck the film at a sharp angle causing grains of sand to cast shadows. The contact print enhanced the contrast of these. The 16mm strips are intended to be projected side by side as loops at 18fps.

-Experiments in Cinema 2015
-Cross Pollination: Hybrid Art Abuzz, 2015 (digital version)


On Our Way                                  view on Vimeo
Digital HD,720, 30p, 14:40 minutes, 2011.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes
Sound Design: Peter Randlette

Traveling in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson reflected on the contrasts between the English and the American landscapes and the relative impact of humans on each. On Our Way is a contemporary response to Emerson, an animated, audio-visual, exploratory collage that contrasts wild and settled western Washington landscapes as a means of considering where we are now, where we are going, and what we have lost.

-The Evergreen State College Premiere, November 2011.
-Olympia Film Festival
-Kuandu International Animation Festival, Taipei



Reign of the Dog: A Re-Visionist History                                  view on Vimeo

16mm film, 16 minutes, 1994.
Animator & Director: Ruth Hayes
Composer: Kasandra Woodring
Audio Mix: John Hawk
Reign of the Dog animates allegorical and documentary images, maps and text to explore and deconstruct the history of the conquest of the Americas. The film's canine spin derives from the Spanish fighting dogs introduced and first used against native resistance by Columbus in 1494.

-Seattle Art Museum Premiere, November 1994.
-Civil Disobediance Award, Humboldt International Film Festival.
-Second Prize, Athens International Film & Video Festival.
-Director's Citation, Black Maria Film & Video Festival.
-Alpha Cine Lab Award and Best of the Northwest Tour, Northwest Film & Video Festival.
Havana International Festival of New Latin American Cinema. "Anima Mundi", Rio de Janeiro. Ann Arbor Film Festival. San Antonio Cine Festival. Big Muddy Film Festival. Carolina Film & Video Festival. Seattle International Film Festival. Metropolitan Film Festival. "Festival de Libre Enganche", Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio. Albany International Short Film Festival. Rainy States Film Festival. Women in the Director's Chair Festival. Tercer Festival Internacional de Escuelas de Cine, Mexico. The Other America Film Festival, San Antonio.

Rental & Sales: The Cinema Guild

In Seattle, available rent-free from Scarecrow Video courtesy of The Seattle Art Commission.



Wanda
view on Vimeo

Video, 4 minutes, 1990
Director & Animator: Ruth Hayes
Audio Mix: John Hawk
On Line: Michael Cho
Additional Camera: Gina Dabrowski
Wanda is a short story of feline and feminine desire. In this delightful piece composed of video animation and live-action footage in Super and Video 8 the narrator reflects on the unrestrained behavior of her cat in heat.

Reviewed by Karen Rosenberg in Women & Animation: A Compendium.

Jurors' Award, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 1991. The 39th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, 1993. The Learning Channel, Through Her Eyes , 1992-96. Women in the Director's Chair Festival Tour, 1992. Midnight Theater, KCTS-9, Seattle, 1991. Dallas Video Festival, 1991. Video Shorts 10, 1991 The Fifth International Festival of Films by Women Directors, Seattle, 1990}

Available on the dvd compilation Desire and Sexuality: Animating the Unconscious Vol. 3 through the British Animation Awards.



Your First Amendment Rights
Video, 2 minutes, 1996
Director & Animator Ruth Hayes.
Soundtrack by Wrick Wolff.
An animated interpretation of First Amendment Rights. Produced by The National Campaign For Freedom of Expression.

view on Vimeo



Eggs

16mm, 4 minutes, 1977
Animation by Ruth Hayes.
Soundtrack by Benjamin Yarmolinsky
 

 view on Vimeo

Motion studies of eggs which break and fall. Vulnerably, helplessly propelled into life
and fleeing hordes of stampeding sperm, they generate a vision of Eden
and exact revenge on the chickens.

New York Film Festival, 1978.
Student Academy Awards Finalist, 1978.
Los Angeles International Film Exposition, 1979.

Available on 16mm for rental.



Body Sketches
view on Vimeo

16mm, 6 minutes, 1978
Animation & Soundtrack by Ruth Hayes

Nine separate animated cycles of human figure drawings
intercut with self-portraits and rotoscoped ocean footage
repeat, converge and spill over into watery confusion.

Director's Choice, Sinking Creek Film Festival, 1979.

Available on 16mm only for rental or sale.



Odyssey: 20 Years in 2 Minutes           view on Vimeo

16mm, silent, 2 min, 1975, Animation by Ruth Hayes

My first animated film made in anticipation of my 20th birthday, and inspired by a conversation with my mother about the movements of the earth, sun and moon in relation to each other, echoed in the myth of Odysseus and Penelope.



Waterworks 16mm, 4 minutes, 1991

Directed by Patricia Galvis Asmus    Soundtrack by Sheila Sofian and Doug Lovied
Animators: Ruth Hayes, Eymard Porto, Aida Sanchez, Dane Picard,
Jeremy Bishop, Patricia Galvis-Asmus
One weekend at Cal Arts, six Experimental Animation students converged and improvised, animating cut-outs, watercolors, seaweed, teabags and dried fish.

Available for rental only.

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