Stay Tooned: David O'Reilly's Films Will Screen Next Month May 11th at MoMA: An Evening With David O'Reilly

“Her.” 2013. USA. Directed by Spike Jonze.

The Museum of Modern Art is turning into a go-to spot for major New York City animation events; New Yorkers - do not miss this one-night only event. After hosting a sell-out lecture by Glen Keane earlier this month, MoMA will highlight an entirely different approach to animation by presenting a retrospective of works by Irish-born and Los Angeles-based independent animator and filmmaker David O'Reilly.

“An Evening with David OReilly” will take place on Monday, May 11, 2015, at 7:00pm, as part of MoMA’s Modern Mondays series, in Theater 2 (The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2). It is the first time that the creations of the 29-year-old filmmaker have been shown at the museum.

“Please Say Something.” 2008. Germany/Ireland. Directed by David OReilly.

O'Reilly is one of the most adventuresome, impishly perverse independent animation filmmakers working today. A darling of the festival circuit—he has won top prizes at Berlin, Ottawa, Annecy, Sundance, and beyond. A mesmerizing storyteller with a gift for open-ended, absurdist narratives, O'Reilly is resolutely independent, moving freely among television, feature film, and music video commissions; video games and interactive projects; Tumbler games, iPhone hologram apps, and Twitter-based comic strips; and virtual reality environments.

For this Modern Mondays event, O'Reilly will be hosting an evening, discussing the many facets of his award-winning career in animation and graphic design, and screens some of his most celebrated films and interactive projects.
The program, curated by MoMA’s Joshua Siegel, will include shorts like RGB XYZ (2007), Please Say Something (2009) and The External World (2010), as well as the New York theatrical premiere of O'Reilly’s latest film The Horse Raised by Spheres (2015).
There might be glimpses of his more commercially-oriented projects as well, like the unforgettably funny and touching faux animated video game “Alien Child” sequence of Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), as well as collaborations with musicians M.I.A. for live visuals at Coachella (2009) and the U2 animated music video "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" (2009). He was also the first guest director in the Cartoon Network’s 20-year history, creating the Adventure Time episode “A Glitch Is a Glitch.” O'Reilly will introduce the program.

“?????.” 2009. Germany, Ireland. Directed by David OReilly.

From MoMA’s program description:

A mesmerizing storyteller with a gift for open-ended, absurdist narratives—“The story for Octocat came to me by reading the Bible word-for-word backwards,” he matter-of-factly observes—O'Reilly is resolutely independent, moving freely among television, feature film, and music video commissions; metaphysical, otherworldly video games and interactive projects that question ideas of the self and the nature of role-playing (Mountain and Character Mirror); Tumbler games, iPhone hologram apps, and Twitter-based comic strips; and virtual reality environments.

Cute and creepy, sentimental and cruel, O'Reilly’s moving-image works are existential nightmares of childhood abandonment, romantic humiliation, totalitarian brainwashing, and entropy. His seemingly crude aesthetic—anti-naturalist, economical, and rule-based—exploits rather than hides the limitations and artifacts of low-polygon 3-D software and “primitive” digital drawing applications like MS Paint (“the same way [Francis] Bacon didn’t hide brush strokes”), and belies a sophisticated and dazzling use of flattened space, perspective, color, sound, and collage. OReilly also employs some of the most cutting-edge technologies available to contemporary filmmakers, including Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets and various forms of proprietary software.

For tickets and more additional information, check and visit the MoMA website.