Stop-motion: Bruce Bickford – Monster Road

It would be impossible to dedicate a programme to stop-motion animation without mentioning Bruce Bickford, a truly original artist who made a name for himself in the 70s by collaborating with Frank Zappa, best known then for the long sequences he animated for the legendary Baby Snakes, the unclassifiable 3-hour film that Zappa directed in 1979.

By using clay to create surreal landscapes inhabited by countless fantastic creatures, Bickford brought animation films into the realms of sculpture and poetry, improvising improbable and shocking metamorphoses to materialise a unique vision of the world, leaving the signature of his heightened sensitivity and wild imagination.

In directing Monster Road, American documentary maker Brett Ingram had special access into Bickford's universe as he recorded the self-taught filmmaker in his suburban home near Seattle and examined the artist's relationship with his father George, a retired Boeing engineer suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Monster Road is not only just a valuable record that gives access to loads of rare archives (Bickford's first endeavours), it's also a remarkable film about creation as well as a sentimental testimony that touches on the relationship between a father and his son.