7 Films by Suzan Pitt

7 Films by Suzan Pitt

8 Episodes

Enter the wild and wondrous world of the late Suzan Pitt, an independent animation visionary whose oneiric psychosexual odysseys are direct channels to her dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and inner desires. Straining a diverse array of influences—from Leonora Carrington to Betty Boop to magical realism—through her subconscious, Pitt became an underground-animation legend with her DIY landmark ASPARAGUS, a kaleidoscopic vegetal fantasia that blew minds when it toured the midnight-movie circuit on a double bill with David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD. Embedding deeply personal explorations of issues like depression (JOY STREET) and mortality (EL DOCTOR) within whorls of biomorphic, Jungian imagery, Pitt’s films are triumphs of surrealist imagination from an artist who brought her unconscious to florid, flickering life.

Subscribe Share
7 Films by Suzan Pitt
  • Suzan Pitt: Persistence of Vision

    Episode 1

    Directed by Blue Kraning and Laura Kraning in 2006, this intimate portrait of internationally acclaimed animator Suzan Pitt explores the inspirations and creative processes behind her meticulously hand-crafted visual poems.

  • Crocus

    Episode 2

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 1971 • United States

    A woman’s nightly domestic rituals—from putting her baby to bed to making love—unspool in a playful parade of surreal, straight-from-the-id images.

  • Jefferson Circus Songs

    Episode 3

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 1973 • United States

    This carnivalesque fairy tale of whimsical costumes and kaleidoscopic colors blends live action and stop-motion animation into an enchanting flight of imagination that plays like an antique children’s music box come to life.

  • Asparagus

    Episode 4

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 1979 • United States

    Suzan Pitt's animated short throws open the doors of perception onto a shape-shifting vision of polymorphous sexuality. A landmark in the history of independent animation, ASPARAGUS is a mesmerizing exploration of the artist's inner world, and a view...

  • Joy Street

    Episode 5

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 1995 • United States

    Entirely hand-painted, JOY STREET is the ambitious, astonishing story of a woman’s journey from suicidal despair to personal renewal with the help of an unlikely spirit guide. Using a Fulbright scholar award, Pitt traveled to remote rainforest region...

  • El doctor

    Episode 6

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 2006 • United States

    This visual animated poem travels between desperation and dark comedy. EL DOCTOR takes place in a crumbling Mexican hospital at the turn of the century. Inhabited by surreal characters—including a man shot with one hundred holes, a girl who has sprou...

  • Visitation

    Episode 7

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 2011 • United States

    Surrealistic and strange, cast in grainy 16 mm images, VISITATION allows an imaginary glimpse into the aura of “an outer-world night.” The visions in the film are summoned from the filmmaker’s imagining of a mythical eternity that is beautiful but fr...

  • Pinball

    Episode 8

    Directed by Suzan Pitt • 2013 • United States

    “PINBALL is an experimental animated film of moving abstract paintings which I painted and animated during the past year with a digital camera. The film visualizes my interpretation of George Antheil’s 1952 revision of ‘Ballet Mecanique’ using trigge...