Detached has been selected in various film festivals and screenings in Australia, UK, Belgium and Turkey.
Form: 2D experimental animation film.
Genre: Mystery
Genre: Mystery
Premise: The alienation that comes along with our detachment from nature through the lens of the characterization of the world itself.
Logline: Gaia’s awakening and explorations through contemporary life in a metropolitan city of the 21st century.
Synopsis: The mythological personification of the mother earth in ancient Greek mythology, finds herself waking up from a long sleep in the 21st century on a normal day in a forest. She starts to walk in the world, and here the whole world is reduced into a walking lane for her. Firstly she directs herself into the woods but the woods turn into crossroads gradually and the forest turns into a metropolitan city where the skyscrapers and factories arise and she starts to lose her mythical features. In this walking journey, animals and plants accompany her, however, they get lost and harmed along the journey as she continues. Birds lose their wings, fish can’t swim anymore with the desertification, and even though she succeeds in helping them at first, humans keep fighting with her until she can’t go any more. As she keeps walking, her appearance changes and evolves. She loses her sympathy and compassion towards others. At the end, she turns into a character that is completely different from who she was at the beginning, and gradually dissolves. Film ends with her completely dissolving into the scene and disappearing.
Detached is a 2D vectorial animation project, for the target audience of young adults between the ages of 18-26, to evoke the feeling of belongingness and thoughts regarding detachment from nature. The project idea occurred whilst I was questioning what it means to lose that which makes one humane and to lose that which makes our experience authentic as a result of the constant overstimulation that has been born out of post-industrial societies. By making references to antiquity, I want to shape my film around one mythological character and the stages that the character goes through. I am studying mythology and antiquity’s place in our modern life because I want to find out how these are still interwoven into our shared experiences as humans. I want to understand how we grow as people whilst we're subjected to the alienation that is a result of the massive cities we live in and the lifestyles that come along with it. My hope is for the audience to go beyond being a passive viewer but instead share the feeling of detachment from their own nature.
This project takes the audience along on a journey, exploring their being and their place in the modern world. This short film will be a love letter to the magic of nature and mythology in a poetic way. It is a call for a hopeful vision on the human-nature connection. Throughout the years, I have gathered some thoughts on these themes and I’ve gained experience as a graphic designer. The combination of these two allows me to synthesize my ideas into an animation film.
Relevant Literature review:
Deniz Gezgin, Bitki Mitosları (2021): The myths, which are the products of man's search for and construction of meaning, convey at first hand the transformation of plants throughout the ages, like all other beings in contact with man. In this work of Deniz Gezgin, entitled Bitki Mitosları, the ways in which plants find a place in the cultural world in different parts of the world and cultures are conveyed. This book traces and explores the thousands of years journey of plants in an encyclopedic approach.
Imogen Greenberg, Gaia: Goddess of Earth (2022): This illustrated graphic novel, goes into Gaia’s personal life and emphasizes her humanistic characteristics. I found this piece to be fascinating since it takes a different approach to classical mythology. Novel basically follows the goddess of earth through her struggles with other gods and mortals as she explores her weaknesses and eventually finds tranquility she has always longed for.
Natalie Haynes, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths (2020): In her retellings of the Trojan War, the Royal House of Thebes, Jason and the Argonauts, and Heracles, she equalizes the roles of the male and female protagonists by beginning with Greek origin myths, the myths are studied from a feminist perspective in this book. As a result, a vivid and compelling depiction of the actions and mistakes of Hera, Aphrodite, Athene, and Circe are re-told, and instead of Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes, or Jason, it is Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone, and Medea who sing from these pages away from the goddesses of Mount Olympus.
Inspirations:
My dive into different genres of mythology that combine well with my own unique approach to life, and the philosophy that I try to build and create. From this personal approach, I decided to go deeper in the subject by combining it with my practice of visual arts when this project came into being. I believe I am very open to being influenced by my surroundings, that can be anything from a story I heard from a friend or a heartbreak I got years ago. I believe intermediality, where the different media is mixed and evolved together, is highly influential in my artwork and specifically in this film. I find inspiration in different media such as poetry, film, photography and also in nature, mythology and symbolism - matters that are intertwined into the cores of our beings and the things that are our own creation. Detached came into being from a personal problem, a sort of questioning, and grew into being an answer to a peculiar problem most of us go through.
