STRANGE TOONS: SHAFT OF LIGHT

Bill Tomlinson's Shaft of Light is a peculiar little 1996 stop-motion film that once seen in never forgotten. Set in a bleak, steampunk-ish, underground realm, the film introduces us to the Carriers, dull-witted, hunched-over robots who spend their lives hauling stuff around for the benefit of an unspecified "them". But then one day, the Carriers discover that the way is blocked. What is blocking the way? They do not know. They shall be late. It is bad to be late.



Shaft of Light did pretty well for a modern short film, screening at Sundance and other festivals and airing everywhere from Bravo to IFC to the Sci-Fi Channel. Around the same time, Tomlinson directed a feature called Artemis that I can't seem to find out much about. But that seems to be as far as he went in the movies, I get the impression that he gave up his film career a while ago. He is a restless talent, and over the years he's worked for Mattel, been a professor at UC Irvine, studied bugs, acted in Mamet plays and served as the creative consultant for something called the "Robotic Life Group" at MIT. (And what have you been doing with your life since 1996?)

Tomlinson's also done a series of art installations, including Boxed In, the large sculpture he and his sister Lynn Tomlinson created for the city of Philadelphia in 1996. If you couldn't make it out, the big fellow is holding a video monitor in one hand, and a video camera in the other. If he looks familiar, he should. He's a Carrier, encased in a too-small display window and no doubt muttering to himself about how the way is blocked.