Jeff Mann

Crossing Point (2020)

Original Score: Jeff Mann & Joe Denny

“In the plant there is a layer - sometimes only one cell wide - between the tissue of the root and the shoot. It is a crossing point between earth and sun. Below, the root hairs grow out of the dense core… the gesture of the form radiates from a mid-point outward. Above, the foliage arises out of a hollow, drawn by the sun from the periphery… The two realms, an organic breathing continuum.” - M.C. Richards (Crossing Point)

“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence. I know that my trunk rose from his warmth, but that’s all, because my branches hardly move at all near the ground, and just wave a little in the wind.” - Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

Using a visual language inspired by diagrams of the human nervous-system, patterns of root growth and branching structures, and movement choreographies, Crossing Point is an animated film exploring touch and sensuality through movement, sound, and the drawing.