Paul Bush

Directing

Paul Bush

Born

1956-01-01 (70)

Place of birth

North London, England, UK

Known for

Directing

Credits

32 titles

Paul Bush (born 1956, north London) is a British experimental film director and animator. The son of classical composer Geoffrey Bush, Paul Bush studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College under Michael Craig-Martin. He later taught himself how to make films while a member of the London Film-Makers' Co-op. He has since made numerous short and medium length films including The Cows Drama (1984), His Comedy (1994), Rumour of True Things (1996), Furniture Poetry (1999), While Darwin Sleeps (2004), and many others. He has won prizes at animation festivals in the Netherlands, Barcelona, Zagreb, Hiroshima, Bombay, Chicago and other places throughout the world. His website contains extracts of many of …

Known for

His Comedy poster
7.0

A journey into the centre of Hell; Dante's The Divine Comedy, illustrated by Gustav Dore's wood engravings and animated by scratching directly into the surface of the film.

His Comedy

1994

Furniture Poetry poster
7.0

Short stop motion animation Directed by Paul Bush

Furniture Poetry

2000

Lay Bare poster
NR

A composite portrait of the human body assembled from details captured by close-up photography of over five hundred men and women of all ages and from all over the world.

Lay Bare

2012

No artwork available
NR

However much he lies there’s one part of a man’s body that always reveals the truth.

Lie Detector

2001

The Albatross poster
7.0

A ship sets sail on an epic voyage through malignant natural and supernatural elements from which one man alone survives. An adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by19th Century wood engravings which are animated by scratching directly into the surface of color filmstock. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its message of ecological redemption has a curiously contemporary resonance, but it is at the level of the mythic that the poem has lasting relevance; for this epic tale of extraordinary events simply mirrors the struggle that each human being faces on their own in his or her life. -VDB

The Albatross

1998

No artwork available
NR

The day is Friday, August 27, 2004. The Samurai are twenty six citizens of Tokyo, stopped as they pass in the busy Shinjuku business and entertainment district of the city. The warriors are asked to stand completely still for five minutes in front of a time- lapse camera while the teeming crowds of the biggest city in the world stream by.

Shinjuku Samurai

2004

Film credits

Behind the camera

His Comedy poster
7.0

A journey into the centre of Hell; Dante's The Divine Comedy, illustrated by Gustav Dore's wood engravings and animated by scratching directly into the surface of the film.

His Comedy

1994

Furniture Poetry poster
7.0

Short stop motion animation Directed by Paul Bush

Furniture Poetry

2000

Lay Bare poster
NR

A composite portrait of the human body assembled from details captured by close-up photography of over five hundred men and women of all ages and from all over the world.

Lay Bare

2012

No artwork available
NR

However much he lies there’s one part of a man’s body that always reveals the truth.

Lie Detector

2001

The Albatross poster
7.0

A ship sets sail on an epic voyage through malignant natural and supernatural elements from which one man alone survives. An adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by19th Century wood engravings which are animated by scratching directly into the surface of color filmstock. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its message of ecological redemption has a curiously contemporary resonance, but it is at the level of the mythic that the poem has lasting relevance; for this epic tale of extraordinary events simply mirrors the struggle that each human being faces on their own in his or her life. -VDB

The Albatross

1998

The Albatross poster
7.0

A ship sets sail on an epic voyage through malignant natural and supernatural elements from which one man alone survives. An adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by19th Century wood engravings which are animated by scratching directly into the surface of color filmstock. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its message of ecological redemption has a curiously contemporary resonance, but it is at the level of the mythic that the poem has lasting relevance; for this epic tale of extraordinary events simply mirrors the struggle that each human being faces on their own in his or her life. -VDB

The Albatross

1998

The Albatross poster
7.0

A ship sets sail on an epic voyage through malignant natural and supernatural elements from which one man alone survives. An adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by19th Century wood engravings which are animated by scratching directly into the surface of color filmstock. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its message of ecological redemption has a curiously contemporary resonance, but it is at the level of the mythic that the poem has lasting relevance; for this epic tale of extraordinary events simply mirrors the struggle that each human being faces on their own in his or her life. -VDB

The Albatross

1998

No artwork available
NR

The day is Friday, August 27, 2004. The Samurai are twenty six citizens of Tokyo, stopped as they pass in the busy Shinjuku business and entertainment district of the city. The warriors are asked to stand completely still for five minutes in front of a time- lapse camera while the teeming crowds of the biggest city in the world stream by.

Shinjuku Samurai

2004

No artwork available
NR

A thoroughly modern geisha gets ready for a fun night out. This is the first episode of a (never completed!) series of short animations featuring the characters who appear in artist Lisa Milroy’s paintings. These depict the exploits of a group of geishas who think pleasure is more important than duty.

Geisha Grooming

2003

Secret Love poster
8.0

This is a music clip for Percy Grainger's extraordinary orchestration of a gory Nordic folk song - Father and daughter. It is animated by scratching frame by frame into filmstock and features Jason Morrell and Annie Carpenter as the father and daughter who wreak havoc on each other and everyone around.

Secret Love

2003

Ride poster
6.5

Quick cutting provides the speed in this tribute to two wheeled transport.

Ride

2018

Ride poster
6.5

Quick cutting provides the speed in this tribute to two wheeled transport.

Ride

2018

No artwork available
NR

Stone and light, just stone and light. ‘Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. Sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents everything as lost and gone or absent and future.’ (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Elegy

2017

The Five Minute Museum poster
9.0

An experimental animation in which thousands of artifacts from the collections of small museums are brought to life in an animated history of human endeavor.

The Five Minute Museum

2015

The Five Minute Museum poster
9.0

An experimental animation in which thousands of artifacts from the collections of small museums are brought to life in an animated history of human endeavor.

The Five Minute Museum

2015

No artwork available
NR

Surreal animated short.

Flik Flak

2000

Babeldom poster
NR

In ancient times they talked of a city in which you could meet youself at birth and on your deathbed. If a city ever existed in which the past and the future were united with the present, it would exist now, and forever...

Babeldom

2013

No artwork available
NR

The third short riff of three films which use the same image; a short story which is just short of a love story.

Good Friends

2016

The Rumour of True Things poster
8.0

Most of the moving images produced for science, industry, commerce, and medicine are seen only by specialized audiences, and are then discarded soon after they are made. Rumour Of True Things is constructed entirely from such moving image ephemera, including computer games, weapons testing, production lines, monitoring, and marriage agency tapes. Rumour Of True Things is a remarkable anthropological portrait of a technologically-based society obsessed with imaging itself. -VDB

The Rumour of True Things

1997

No artwork available
8.0

The meeting of Hollywood’s most famous choreographer, and one of it’s most famous quotes “Is that a gun in your pocket?” (Mae West).

Busby Berkeley's Tribute to Mae West

2002

No artwork available
8.0

The meeting of Hollywood’s most famous choreographer, and one of it’s most famous quotes “Is that a gun in your pocket?” (Mae West).

Busby Berkeley's Tribute to Mae West

2002

Orgiastic Hyper-Plastic poster
6.0

An elegy to a love affair that has gone sour, a fond farewell to that most beautiful material that has subjugated our planet – plastic.

Orgiastic Hyper-Plastic

2020

Orgiastic Hyper-Plastic poster
6.0

An elegy to a love affair that has gone sour, a fond farewell to that most beautiful material that has subjugated our planet – plastic.

Orgiastic Hyper-Plastic

2020

No artwork available
NR

The second instalment.

Flik Flak 2

2000

No artwork available
7.0

Drama, from the Greek, to do, act, or perform. A composition in which a story is related by means of dialogue and action and is represented with accompanying gesture, costume and scenery, as in real life, a play. The simplest story; a cow in a field, a day passes, articulated by a sequence of simple actions. Another day passes and the actions only vary with the chance events that make one day different from any other. Between the days three traditional songs about work, love and death are sung. These are stories too, but of generalisation, metaphor and myth, whereas the cow's drama follows only the surface pattern of events, the specific.

The Cow's Drama

1984

No artwork available
7.0

Drama, from the Greek, to do, act, or perform. A composition in which a story is related by means of dialogue and action and is represented with accompanying gesture, costume and scenery, as in real life, a play. The simplest story; a cow in a field, a day passes, articulated by a sequence of simple actions. Another day passes and the actions only vary with the chance events that make one day different from any other. Between the days three traditional songs about work, love and death are sung. These are stories too, but of generalisation, metaphor and myth, whereas the cow's drama follows only the surface pattern of events, the specific.

The Cow's Drama

1984

No artwork available
7.0

More than three thousand insects appear in this film each for a single frame. As the colours glow and change across their bodies and wings it is as if the genetic programme of millions of years is taking place in a few minutes. It is a rampant creation that seems to defy the explanations of evolutionists and fundamentalists. It is like a mescalin dream of Charles Darwin's. The film is inspired by the insect collection of Walter Linsenmaier in the natural history museum of Luzern. As each insect follows the other, frame by frame, they appear to unfurl their antennae, scuttle along, or flap their wings as if trying to escape the pinions which attach them forever in their display cases. Just for a moment the eye is tricked into believing that these dead creatures still live . . .

While Darwin Sleeps...

2004

No artwork available
NR

Paul Bush tries to talk about the making of While Darwin Sleeps and his aspirations for cinema but all the time the film itself tries to take over and in the end completely overwhelms him. Commissioned for Canal + France.

Paul Bush Talks

2006

Still Life with Small Cup poster
NR

A radical reworking of an etching by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, brought to life by engraving frame by frame directly into the photographic emulsion of colour filmstock. The viewer is taken on a journey through the etching, accompanied by the sounds that the artist might have heard from his window as he worked. Scratched onto 8 perf 35mm colour filmstock and printed as negative.

Still Life with Small Cup

1995

No artwork available
NR

A parasitic presence has completely taken over the body of its host while allowing its movements and mannerisms to remain intact; a pas de deux from classical ballet has been restaged frame by frame with the two original dancers replaced by four new dancers. The movement remains continuous, but in each frame a different person occupies the dancers’ body spaces.

Pas de Deux de Deux

2001

Jekyll and Hyde poster
NR

Imagine that the camera is possessed with a psychosis similar to human schizophrenia; suppose that this disease subtly changes every single frame of film while leaving the narrative superficially intact. A reworking of 1941 MGM version of Jekyll and Hyde in which the actors are replaced in every single frame.

Jekyll and Hyde

2001