Tusk
Rory Waudby-Tolley's animated short about a mammoth thawed out into a future it doesn't recognise. Screened in Greenhorn's Strange World programme, 2015.
- Director
- Rory Waudby-Tolley
- Shown at Greenhorn
- 2015
A mammoth is thawed out of the ice and dropped into a future that has no place for it. Tusk is about memory, about time passing and about being made to feel like an exhibit. The director has said that the mammoth could stand for many different groups of people, and that he is happy to leave it ambiguous.
Rory Waudby-Tolley made the film in his first year at the Royal College of Art. He has said it began with an obsession with drawing strange humanoid elephant characters. Sara Houghton and Gary Pillai voice it, and it runs just over five minutes. Short of the Week featured it in July 2015. It was selected for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival that year, and it won a student award at the Golden Kuker festival in Sofia.
At Greenhorn, Tusk played in the Sunday afternoon Strange World programme of the 2015 festival. Waudby-Tolley went on to make the graduation film Mr Madila, which also won festival awards.
For filmmakers
Tusk is an example of a first-year student film that played at major festivals because of a distinctive drawing style and a simple, open premise. See our guide to making an animated short.
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