PEREGRINE
DIRECTED BY DANIELA SHERER
ISRAEL, UNITED KINGDOM // 2020
3 MINS
"Peregrine" is an experimental animated film about obsession, instinct, and innate darkness. It explores the elegance and majesty of nature, but also its unavoidable cruelty. Inspired by the autobiographical "The Peregrine", written by A.J. Baker.
Reflective Encounters
“Daniela Sherer’s Peregrine opens with a quote from J.A. Baker - who wrote the non-fiction book of the same name - which serves as a key to understanding the abstraction which follows. It’s a short film about transfiguration and change, of what is lost but what is gained, and how forms merge into each other to produce new ones. The titular bird of prey inspires such awe in the viewer that the past seems to rise up before us, albeit one which is shattered once the hawk has flown away.
Peregrine serves as a beautiful evocation of the conflict between nature and civilization, but also of the potential for symbiosis which humanity so often jeopardises. The simple black-and-white design blends ancient columns with leaves from tree, with the hawk itself rendered as a simple semi-circle which moves through the blank space. The effect is like chalk on a blackboard, the figures floating without any specificity of time or place.
The focus of Sherer’s film is on the perspective of the beholder who looks first through binoculars and later with their naked eye. We reflect on the impermanence of things by contrast to the constancy of the natural world, and of how we should value and protect it.”
— Lillian Crawford
Filmmaker Bio
Daniela Sherer is an indie animator and illustrator. In 2013 she graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a master’s in Animation.
She’s a 2009 graduate of USC, LA. Daniela has worked on projects ranging from music videos and short independent films, to animated sequences for features and animation for the stage.
Her clients include: Cartoon Network, NPR, ACLU, the Barbican Centre, Harvard University, Pinterest, Massive, the Suzanne Dellal Centre, and more.
Her animated films have won awards and have been exhibited in festivals worldwide, such as Annecy, Hiroshima, Zagreb, OIAF and Stuttgart ITFS. She draws frames lovingly.