BFI

Funded by the BFI Production Board on the strength of his early animated films Spectres (1987) and Taboo of Dirt (1988), Signatures continues Martyn Pick's exploration of a thick-lined, charcoal-based style, which he uses to create an oppressive universe out of looming shadows and vertiginous angles, accompanied by a throbbing industrial score by Bruce Gilbert (formerly of experimental art-punk band The Wire).

The film opens with brief flashes of teeth, skin and splashes of red that appear to form the final stages of a nightmare suffered by the unnamed protagonist. But it quickly becomes clear that his waking hours aren't much better: his passage to work is studded with apocalyptic headlines and aggressive beggars, and his soul-deadening cubicle-based job as a computer terminal operator is rendered irritating by strobe-like editing and actively terrifying by the constant presence of his unsympathetic boss.

The film has no spoken content, "monologues" such as the boss's vivid depiction of his underling as a homeless alcoholic (if he doesn't shape his ideas up) burst out of black speech bubbles and fill the screen. A recurring motif is the protagonist's eye, bloodshot, exhausted, shifting nervously from side to side. Pick uses colour sparingly - a green tie, a yellow comb, a bar bathed in baleful red - so that it stands out in an otherwise monochrome world.

Michael Brooke

Click titles to see or read more