Post by kokobashky on Sept 1, 2024 20:09:44 GMT
Hi everyone, this has been a piece of media that I have been trying to identify and find recently. I have tried posting in both r/tipofmytongue and r/lostmedia but recieved no response there. Below is a copy/paste of the post I made on r/lostmedia with all the info:
I'm currently on the search for a strange disturbing claymation animation I saw in an exhibition at ACMI in Melbourne, Australia, a museum for film, animation and videogames. Although I can't remember which exhibition it was for but it must have been at some point between 2007-2010. I made a post about it on r/tipofmytongue first, but got no responses. The only trace I managed to find about it online were two previous posts (1,2) about it on r/tipofmytongue where the original posters and people in the comments also recalled some of the same details I did. However, no one could identify or find it.
Details
It was about 3-4 minutes long and was visually very dark. The plot was centred around a fat woman and her white cat and took place in her kitchen. She accidentally peels her own skin with a potato peeler and her cat eats her peeling. She gets the idea of peeling herself more to become thinner and she feeds the peelings to her cat. I very vividly remember a shot where she walks up to the cat's food bowl and plops a pile of her "peelings" into it. She also begins to gather her peelings in garbage bags. The way it ends is that her cat eventually becomes fat and she collapses and possibly dies from becoming too thin. Pretty disturbing...
My search so far
As previously mentioned, the only things I found when trying to search for details of it were the previous r/tipofmytongue posts. In many of the comments people claim also seeing it at ACMI or at a short film festival. Meanwhile, one of the OPs claims it may have been a government PSA about eating disorders that played on TV between 2006-2007. I took this lead and tried to search through Australian PSAs and could not find it.
I have tried to look for the claymation through ACMI as my next step. I sent them an email describing the animation and whether they have this in their collection, but I got no response as of yet. I've tried searching through ACMI's collection in their claymation section, but could not find it easily as many of the items have no screenshots or images. Going through each of the 118 results I find a piece of media called "The true tale of Maude and Flossy".
Out of all the results this looked like the most likely title as it kinda sounds like the name of a woman and her pet cat. It was created by someone called Eva Lee in 1996. However the runtime is longer at 7mins 43secs. Furthermore, there is no description and images and I can't find any information about it elsewhere or about the creator Eva Lee. This is really the only lead we have so far. It may just be completely wrong and is an entirely different Australian-made claymation that is either lost or inaccessible to the public.
Significance
Finding this piece of media would be great as it may be a piece of Australian animation history and it may have even been a PSA on TV. It is also similar to media like Clockman or Cracks due to being a creepy animation many recall seeing when they were kids and has left an impression on them. I think it would be a very interesting discovery indeed to see once again whether it really was as distubing as we remember.
I'm currently on the search for a strange disturbing claymation animation I saw in an exhibition at ACMI in Melbourne, Australia, a museum for film, animation and videogames. Although I can't remember which exhibition it was for but it must have been at some point between 2007-2010. I made a post about it on r/tipofmytongue first, but got no responses. The only trace I managed to find about it online were two previous posts (1,2) about it on r/tipofmytongue where the original posters and people in the comments also recalled some of the same details I did. However, no one could identify or find it.
Details
It was about 3-4 minutes long and was visually very dark. The plot was centred around a fat woman and her white cat and took place in her kitchen. She accidentally peels her own skin with a potato peeler and her cat eats her peeling. She gets the idea of peeling herself more to become thinner and she feeds the peelings to her cat. I very vividly remember a shot where she walks up to the cat's food bowl and plops a pile of her "peelings" into it. She also begins to gather her peelings in garbage bags. The way it ends is that her cat eventually becomes fat and she collapses and possibly dies from becoming too thin. Pretty disturbing...
My search so far
As previously mentioned, the only things I found when trying to search for details of it were the previous r/tipofmytongue posts. In many of the comments people claim also seeing it at ACMI or at a short film festival. Meanwhile, one of the OPs claims it may have been a government PSA about eating disorders that played on TV between 2006-2007. I took this lead and tried to search through Australian PSAs and could not find it.
I have tried to look for the claymation through ACMI as my next step. I sent them an email describing the animation and whether they have this in their collection, but I got no response as of yet. I've tried searching through ACMI's collection in their claymation section, but could not find it easily as many of the items have no screenshots or images. Going through each of the 118 results I find a piece of media called "The true tale of Maude and Flossy".
Out of all the results this looked like the most likely title as it kinda sounds like the name of a woman and her pet cat. It was created by someone called Eva Lee in 1996. However the runtime is longer at 7mins 43secs. Furthermore, there is no description and images and I can't find any information about it elsewhere or about the creator Eva Lee. This is really the only lead we have so far. It may just be completely wrong and is an entirely different Australian-made claymation that is either lost or inaccessible to the public.
Significance
Finding this piece of media would be great as it may be a piece of Australian animation history and it may have even been a PSA on TV. It is also similar to media like Clockman or Cracks due to being a creepy animation many recall seeing when they were kids and has left an impression on them. I think it would be a very interesting discovery indeed to see once again whether it really was as distubing as we remember.
