CMA Thrust Assistant Professor of Practice Rui Hu's work A Comprehensive Theory won the Best Experimental Animation Award at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA, announced on March 30, 2022.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the oldest avant-garde and experimental film festival in North America, founded by University of Michigan professor George Manupelli in 1963. Internationally recognized as a premiere forum for independent filmmakers and artists, each year's festival engages audiences with remarkable cinematic experiences. The six-day festival presents 40 programs with more than 180 films from over 20 countries of all lengths and genres, including experimental, animation, documentary, fiction, and performance-based works.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival receives more than 3,000 submissions annually from more than 65 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award®-qualifying festivals in the United States. Thousands of influential filmmakers and artists have exhibited early work at the AAFF, including Kenneth Anger, Brian De Palma, Agnes Varda, Andy Warhol, Gus Van Sant, Barbara Hammer, George Lucas, Les Blank, Matthew Buckingham, and James Benning.
Supported by the Shanghai Swatch Art Peace Hotel Art Center residency, A Comprehensive Theory (2021) is an 8-minute conceptual 3D animation. Inspired by notions in quantum physics and cosmology, A Comprehensive Theory uses the linear form to explore the duality of connection and confinement, chaos and order, parallel and entanglement. In addition, a library, which represents the collection and organization of human knowledge, serves as the site holding the combination of and tension between books, globes, light, staircase, chains, and the statue of Sleeping Ariadne, signaling the act of navigating through the network of information.
