All These Sons   

Documentary · Concordia

A documentary about gun violence in Chicago, and two programs trying to interrupt it: MAAFA Redemption on the West Side, IMAN on the South, both run by men who have been through it themselves. The animation carries the part nobody filmed — the stories the men tell about what was done to them, and what they did.

It’s made the way animation was made before computers. Paint pushed around on glass. Emulsion scratched off the film itself. Torn paper, and photographs of the men, worked over by hand. Every frame exists once, which is why the image never sits still: no two frames were ever the same, so the whole picture boils. We built the filmstrips digitally and worked straight ahead, frame after frame, without going back to fix anything. We kept the accidents.

There are no characters in it. A man is a circle, larger than the circle he's arguing with. Rectangles cross the frame with the rhythm of train tracks and moving pavement. It runs closer to visual music than illustration, darker in color and texture than the film around it — except for one passage, where a father remembers the son he missed while he was inside.

88 min · 4 min of animation · 2021

Poster for All These Sons: a young man smiles at a toddler, with a church steeple rising behind them in a pale, washed-out Chicago neighborhood. Above the title, it reads "From the team behind the Academy Award–nominated documentary Minding the Gap"

Every frame exists once

Filmstrip

Every frame of the animation laid out at once: rows of black bar shapes that shift from one to the next — All These Sons.
Black bar shapes shift frame by frame, building into boxes and arrows, then collapsing and re-forming — All These Sons.

We kept the accidents

Filmstrips

A man Is a circle

Concept

In the film's abstract visual language, circles stand for people: here a dark circle edges into a field of textured blue — All These Sons.
A pale circle rises against glowing orange — All These Sons.
A green circle and a red circle face each other as handwritten words build line by line to "Hey man, ain't you gonna say excuse me?" — All These Sons.
A white X, meaning stop, is scratched across black — All These Sons.
A dense tangle of gray scribbles, standing for violence — All These Sons.
A red circle ringed in magenta sits apart from a dark circle, divided by a black line — All These Sons.
Strips of white tape form the outline of a house on black — All These Sons.
A crayon house labeled "Hiding places" sits beneath the words "Hey man, ain't you gonna say…" as red scribbles of violence crowd its edge — All These Sons.
Loose crayon houses in olive and pink above the words "…ain't you gonna say excuse me?", with black ink spattered below — All These Sons.
A cluster of small painted circles gathers beneath "Hey man, ain't you gonna say excuse me?" as white scribbles of violence close in beside them — All These Sons.
Black shapes billow like smoke through burnt orange — All These Sons.
Black tape lines frame a house over gray lined paper, with scribbles tangling below — All These Sons.

Closer to visual music

Compilation

Credits

Directors
Bing Liu · Joshua Altman

Animation Director
Jason Carpenter

Design & Animation
Jason Carpenter · David Navas

Producers
Zak Piper · Kelsey Carr · Bing Liu · Joshua Altman

Co-Producer
Carina Nieto

Executive Producers
Davis Guggenheim · Laurene Powell Jobs · Nicole Stott · Jonathan Silberberg · Rahdi Taylor · Shannon Dill

Production
Concordia Studios

Distribution‍ ‍
Gravitas Ventures (TBA)


World Premiere
Tribeca Film Festival, Documentary Competition · 2021

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