None Saved1976

None Saved (16mm, 16 min, sound, black-and-white, 1976)
Based on the idea of Indonesian shadow puppet plays, which combine popular songs and Hindu
mythology with political satire and broad comedy, None Saved satirically plays off of the events
and mass emotions surrounding Jimmy Carter’s drive for the presidency in 1976.
In the film, a Javanese-style monster rises up through several incarnations until it reaches
a kind of shadow-cultural Nirvana. I often made paper shadow puppets based on images of white
people I found on Chinese and Japanese toy packaging, thus reversing a trend in American
animation to stereotype Asian features. None Saved was strongly influenced by Harry Smith’s
Heaven and Earth Magic, which presented similar tactics of disassociation and, according to the
artist, a trek to heaven and back.
“Striking political commentaries based on Indonesian shadow puppetry.”
–Robert Trussell, The Kansas City Star