Martha Colburn: Helltastic Animator Makes Online Inroads

Few filmmakers can say they had not one, but two movies at last month's illustrious Sundance Film Festival, but collagist-artist-renegade Martha Colburn is no run-of-the-mill wannabe auteur. Colburn is the real thing, and her short, helltastic hodgepodges are perfect examples of the postmodern aesthetic of online video – even though her work long predates Web 2.0.

Since 1994, Colburn has been making wacky and disturbing animated found-footage collages that have earned her accolades and attention from some of the world's most distinguished programmers and critics – one journalist described her work as the "perfect marriage of Monty Python and Hieronymous Bosch," while no less than experimental film guru Jonas Mekas called them "naked testimonials of our times."

At Sundance, she premiered an installation called "Meet Me in Wichita," which indicts America's foreign-policy through hand-painted cut-outs of Osama bin Laden and The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy, as well as the similarly-themed "Destiny Manifesto" (available for viewing here), a wild-west ride through Iraq, which draws parallels between the American frontier and its current imperialist struggle in the Middle East.

Featuring Colburn's trademark stop-motion movement and drawing – she just loves skulls and skeletons – "Destiny Manifesto" is a bloody nightmare of manifest-destiny gone awry. (For more, Colburn's website includes an excerpt of her 2001 cut-and-paste porno carnivalesque "Skelehellavision," one of my personal favorites.)

"Destiny Manifesto" also looks as if it was developed from this video for Friendly Rich and The Lollipop People's first single "Friendly Fire," one of a few Colburn works to make their way onto YouTube.

You can also catch her catchy psychedelic spot for the band Deerhoof's "Wrong Time Capsule," which also toured with the group.

New Yorkers, be sure to check out this moving, hilarious tribute to Brooklyn, made with a soundtrack from They Might Be Giants ("Let's celebrate Brooklyn now, even the Gowanus canal... even the Gowanas canal...")