Richard Brautigan Visits the Micronations (Sealand)
16mm & DV
2004
This film is about the famous writer Richard Brautigan, and a trip to the nation of Sealand.
The story begins in Montana, where we find Richard at his typewriter, working on a novel entitled "Richard Brautigan Visits the Micronations by Richard Brautigan."
Richard is planning a trip to visit the nation of Sealand in order to meet Prince Roy Bates, the owner of Sealand and the most notorious resident of the island. Richard uses his map to figure out how to get there.
Travelling by helicopter, Richard eventually arrives at Sealand. Prince Roy introduces some important aspects of the island, and explains some of its history to Richard. The island is in actuality nearly as small as a basketball
court. But Prince Roy is very proud of his nation, and Richard goes home with excellent material for his new book.
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I made this animation in 2004, in a puppet animation class, when I was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The one and only screening of this film was accompanied by a live rendition of the dialogue by me, and featured sound effects played from a cued cassette. The machine I used to telecine the film to DV was pretty terrible so the image quality here is not so hot.
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Update, January 2007! Sealand suffered major damage in an unfortunate fire (I mean the actual Sealand. My cardboard models are safe.) Read about it here. In related news, The Pirate Bay, a bit-torrent tracker site, hopes to raise enough money to buy the rights to use Sealand. Apparently it costs $977,000,000.00, according to the Sealand page on Wikipedia.
